Yesterday, I ran into my friend Bruce, whose politics are very much like mine. He told me he’d been catching up on my blog and noticed that I’d “gone political.” He then laughingly added that I’d flip-flopped, saying, “You’re a far cry from the earlier Fendrich who blogged about how she would never wear political buttons on campus.”
I may be blogging more and more on politics, but as my friend knows, I haven’t flip-flopped a bit. I still won’t discuss politics with my students, in or out of the classroom, and I never wear political buttons on campus. I’m sorry to report, alas, that few if any of my students care or even know that I blog, and those who do are apparently able to blissfully go about their lives without running them in strict accordance with my online pearls of wisdom.
Even if one were to construe from my earlier post that I meant to keep my political persuasions entirely to myself (which was not what I argued), Emerson’s famous remark, that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, seems relevant. To me, “small minds” include those that belong to writers who timidly fail ever to venture outside their areas of strict “expertise.”
Which brings me to a related subject — a reader’s recent suggestion that I blog more on art and less on politics. Sure, I like to write about art and artists, and yes, I know a fair amount about that subject. But I deeply believe that all of us — not just “experts” — own the political discussions during an election year. My ideas about citizenship derive from reading about the ancient Greeks — they were the first citizens, in the first democracy, after all, and have something to teach us — who believed that citizenship consisted, in large part, in individuals publicly and rationally opining on what is to be done.
Our particular form of mass democracy — with its powerful special-interest groups, its mass media stranglehold on “the truth,” and its behemothic governmental structures — demands two things from us if we are to be citizens in any meaningful sense of the word, and not merely subjects living in a tyranny:
First, we need actively to resist the pressure to become isolated specialists.
Second, we need actively to resist the impulse to remain politely on the political sidelines.
None of us — especially those of us who read and think with any breadth or depth — should concede commentary on politics to putative “experts” with lots of “experience.” Charles Krauthammer, who wrote an unintentionally side-splitting column about how “calm and confident” Bush is near the end of his term, has political expertise coming out his ears. And Dick Cheney is one of our most experienced vice presidents ever.
When everyone speaks up, we admittedly confront the problem of a messy, frequently ugly cacophony of voices, each of them equal to the next, and it’s hard to sort through them to find the clear and intelligent ones. With mainstream journalists who’ve abandoned — in the face of eight years of scolding by the current administration — any really investigative journalism, hard-core right-wingers who can’t stop insinuating that Obama is a Muslim, and far-left-conspiratorialists who keep suggesting Bush masterminded 9/11, where are the sober reasoners?
Those of us who argue our points using rational discourse (where, oh where, has the Enlightenment gone?) consist of a small group, and we cannot lay claim to the final truth. Politics is an art, not a science. But we who respect reason have an extra obligation — especially in the midst of this heated presidential campaign — to write about politics.
The moderate voices in both political parties — and, pace some of the readers who post fairly nasty comments on my ideas, I consider myself one of these — strive to reach beyond our narrow, circumscribed lives, learn about the world beyond us, think with a logical mind, and, yes, take public positions on important political issues. We speak up in front of family, friends and colleagues, and if we are lucky enough to have a place to blog, we speak up on our blog sites. There, once the post goes up, it’s up to fellow citizens who share the desire for rational discourse to continue the discussion.
I’ll continue to blog on a variety of topics, including both art and politics. When I blog on politics, I hope readers will consider me no more and no less than a “citizen-blogger.” In proudly proclaiming that I am not an expert, but rather a citizen, I celebrate my status as an informed and rational amateur.
Steer clear of politics? On my blog? During this election year? I don’t think so. We’re not living in an expertocracy — at least not yet.
