BREAKING: It's all anthropology now, says Drum!

TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2018

With gusto, the analysts cheer: In spite of all the scarping and scrapping, you'll have to admit that we've had a good effect on our favorite blogger, Kevin Drum.

As we've frequently said, we think Drum's work on the effects of lead exposure is the best body of erudition to emerge from the web—with the exception of our own disappeared mountain of work on the press corps' 25-year war on Clinton, Clinton and Gore.

For Drum's hard-copy Mother Jones cover report on the effects of lead, you can just click here. Today, though, we can go that one better:

In this new post, Drum comes out and states a larger truth:

It's all anthropology now! Also, our floundering species, homo sapiens, just plain ain't up to the task!

Drum focuses on a recent, highly inaccurate claim by a D.C. council member. In our view, that claim is part of the biggest "news story"/revelation to emerge in the past thirty years.

That revelation involves the remarkable monster dumbness of our failing species. It involves the crazy things we tend to believe, and the hopelessness of improving the situation under current arrangements.

Why are we doomed to death by crazy belief? Below, we'll list three answers:

Why we're doomed to death by crazy belief:
Talk radio
Cable news
The Internet

Youngsters, please understand! Before these media came into existence, it was actually fairly hard to hear crazy assertions.

You had to go to the corner bar and sidle up to the craziest drunk. You had to send away, by U.S. mail, to crazy organizations like the Birch Society.

In those days, it was actually hard to hear crazy claims. Today, the promulgation of crazy claims is a major industry. It's practiced all over the dial and all across the partisan spectrum.

Conservatives hear crazy claims, but we liberals hear crazy claims too. Did you realize that Public School A is a "segregated school?" Did you know that the disturbed, money-grubbing Stephanie Clifford is a "feminist hero" who wants to share a "#MeToo story?"

We liberals are exposed to such claims every day. We're too dumb to see how crazy they are, though most other folk can this quite clearly.

Our craziest claim is the one which Hillary Clinton won't stop making. We're not unlike the gullible "conservatives" who can't see through the crazy claims Sean Hannity makes Over There.

The Crazy isn't all Over There! At last, though, Drum has copped to the era's central fact:

Our species isn't made for this challenge. Under present arrangements, we're simply too dumb to be self-governing. Too dumb all the way down!

As stated on C-Span: On February 23, Robert Reich made a presentation about his new book, The Common Good, at Harvard University. Thanks to the wonders of C-Span, you can watch the whole hour here.

At the 48-minute mark, Reich fielded a question from a LaRouche supporter. As the audience hoots, Reich shows genuine moral brilliance in the way he responds to this young woman.

The next questioner was a bit unusual too. Again, Reich was quite eloquent in his approach to this man.

At the 45-minute mark, a man had asked Reich about our technological problem. "I was interested in, heartened to hear about your optimism for a new progressive era," he said. "I just want to ask—it seems to me there are some systematic issues that are very different now."

He mentioned three "systematic differences." One of the three was this:

"The Facebook phenomenon, we go to the media we understand, that will reinforce us."

"Given those differences, how can you be optimistic?" this man asked. Regarding the splintering of the media, we thought he asked a very good question—the only real question, in fact.

It was a question Reich didn't address, except in his later moral example. That said, there is no sign that our system of government can survive under current arrangements, in which The Crazy is big business, sold all across the dial.