How I’d love to trust the people

I’m no historian, but the first time I heard of the electoral college, my immediate thought was the founding fathers knew the people well. It fit with my contention that no one who has actually sat in a high school classroom could possibly feel confident about the people’s ability to make hard choices. It’s just unreasonable.

Let me give you a real-life example. I was teaching a high school science class to sophomores in the Midwest. These kids were ordinary, typical high schoolers, neither geniuses nor dummies. I began with the story of the first real automobile trip, a trip that took place in Germany, not the US. It was a surprising story they’d never heard of before. There was no infrastructure so the intrepid travelers, the people eventually behind Mercedes-Benz, had to stop at pharmacies for fuel. My point was that in the beginning all was exciting and innocent but there was little to suggest the impact of the automobile. I suggested we knew what would happen and had perfect hindsight.

I then asked the class if they could go back to that day, would they warn those inventors that their pride and joy would dangerously pollute the planet and kill hundreds of thousands of people, too? Would they urge the invention be shelved?

By a vast majority the class would not. They loved their automobiles and couldn’t imagine life without them. Deaths and pollution seemed a reasonable price for their use and there was no dissuading them. There’s no doubt in my mind that as adults their decision would not have changed.

Here’s another example. Recently I heard George Lakoff on New Dimensions talk about the way conservatives think. I was stunned to be in total agreement with him though the reality he was describing was more frightening to me than any story about ISIS being murderously ruthless. Conservative thinking is hopeless; it is primitive and nearly incapable of any forward movement in my opinion.

I’ve come to the conclusion at my advanced age that the people as a whole are not very intelligent by which I mean they are not capable of overcoming obstacles to general improvement. Their thinking skills are poor with disuse and counterproductive to anything but their own usually short-term benefit. Their counsel is no way to guide society unless what you’re looking for is complete dysfunction as in the US today.

To my mind this is what the founding fathers had in mind with the electoral college. Their message seemed clear to me from the beginning: People would do far better recognizing those who were intelligent enough to govern the country for the benefit of all and send them East as their representatives to do their thinking. If only it had worked but they failed to foresee that the whole enterprise would degenerate into barely more than a grab for federal dollars. In America it’s considered better to send a bully to Washington than a Jefferson.

Don’t get me wrong: There are a great many good people in the US but they are not the majority. I don’t doubt it’s the same everywhere, but that does not make me any more willing to entrust my future to the mob however genteel. So I’m afraid I’m going to have to vote no to democracy especially the way we’ve distorted it in the West. Do real campaign finance reform and maybe with education and temperance, we’d have a chance, but not before. The powerful have managed to rig the system beyond repair and the people in their lack of wisdom have stood idly by while it happened.