January 23, 2019 

                     “[I]ntelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.” 

            Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets

     That attribute is notably lacking in contemporary politicians, especially among Republicans.  Seeing things as they are, for example the threat of climate change, the inequity and fiscal foolishness of tax cuts, or the danger that a sea of firearms poses, seems not to occur.  Is it simply lack of gray matter?  “The comprehension of truth calls for higher powers than the defense of error,”[9] so perhaps It is beyond them.  Or, truth may seem too unfamiliar to accept: “Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction. For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.”[10]  

     “Practical politics consists in ignoring facts,”[11] so maybe it’s inherent in the game.  On the other hand, it may be a sort of political relativism, one set of facts for our side, another for those people.  If so, the mind closes: “I'll not listen to reason. . . . Reason always means what someone else has got to say.”[12] 

     Republican views are not so much the result of thinking as of the absorption of the party line, which acts as the enemy of reasoning: “Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.”[13]

     Another possibility is that conservative politicians are influenced by right wing agitators, who preach bias dressed up as nationalism.  Such preachers and their flock are beyond teaching: “[T]he mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.”[14] 

     There is, of course, the possibility that our supposed public servants are not really interested in serving the public interest.  An old and cynical definition of politics certainly could be applied to the machinations of Our Glorious Leader: “A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”[15]

     It could be, and no doubt is in part, that political decisions simply are the echo of political contributions: “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can't remember the second."[15]  Reversal of Citizens United would help to combat that disease.  Otherwise, it’s down to a matter of voting the rascals out.

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9. Goethe

10. G. K. Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades

11. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

12. Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford

13. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature

14. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

15. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

16. Mark Hanna