"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

--Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816

Let's see if we have this right. In a week when an insurance company which cleared a $2.5 billion profit in the third quarter of a year when the rest of us are dealing with a dramatic recession announces huge rate increases, while Congress still finds itself unable to do anything about it but express rage, in a week when it is reported that the widespread view of those who worry about these things is that the

political system seem[s] more polarized and less able to solve big problems that involve trust, tough choices and little short-term gain

in the week when the Governor of the second or third largest state in the country, is convincingly described as a man who

despite the state's crippling crisis, ... has seldom engaged with [members of the Legislature] beyond denouncing them. And several former state commissioners say he has virtually no involvement with those he has running major agencies, only rarely participating in policy meetings

the lead story on Friday's CBS Evening News, one that was reported for all of the twelve minutes of the program that the local newsradio station simulcasts, was about a golfer who cheated on his wife and said he was sorry about it.

"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree."

Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.

The cutie pies on Mourning Joe had explained the interest in the golfer's story in a sort of circular way: it would get a lot of coverage, they said, because it is what people want to hear. That is doubtless true and this whole essay is written by a person who spends endless hours watching, studying and reading about the Boston Red Sox, an issue of no serious consequence for our future on this planet. Diversion is not only welcome it is necessary.

But the CBS Evening News ought not to be the source of that diversion. The NBC Nightly News needs not to be converted into a commercial for that network's Olympic coverage either, although were it not for that they would spend huge amounts of their limited time telling heartwarming stories about people who "make a difference" or what works" in segments sponsored by an insurance company (perhaps explaining why they need to raise their rates).

We are, as discussed ad nauseum under this byline, a happily stupid nation, suspicious of and derisive toward intellectuals and other people who try to absorb information from which to make conclusions rather than just repeat anything that they may have heard that resonates as if it were true. We have gotten away with this for so long we think it is acceptable, or the way things must be.

This is what the Bush people meant when, still riding high from the public adulation that somehow followed their inability to protect our country from a horrific attack that murdered thousands of people guilty of having shown up to work, one of their members told Ron Suskind, writing for the New York Times Magazine that

the reality-based community, [defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from ... judicious study of discernible reality' don't understand that t]hat's not the way the world really works anymore...We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

And to this growing crowd---they dominate, oddly, what passes for "thought" these days in many places, particularly news reporters and political types, especially in the Beltway area---facts just don't mean all that much. You can keep saying, endlessly, that the stimulus passed under the emergency circumstances that existed as President Obama took office, "didn't work," was "nothing more than pork" or even, as one established politician claimed to cheers, made things worse, even when the only fact based criticism would be that it was too small for the task, because nobody gets called on the stupid statements. (The hypocrisy meme the administration has tried to push, actually does seem to have some resonance, but that is a small light in an otherwise bleak horizon).

Indeed, as Robert Reich discussed this week it is noise which "sells" much as the golfer's infidelity story does, and isn't that more important than what is so. Isn't the Bush advisor right when he says that objective facts (just look at this White House created chart) don't matter as much anymore. To many of us it apparently does not even matter if a presidential candidate is qualified to be president to be worthy of their vote. If you like her, or really don't like the incumbent, perhaps for repulsive reasons, or maybe not, what does "competence" bring to the table?

Our nation is in trouble. As discussed here last week, we have fallen behind so much of the world in dealing with the need for finding new ways to power our lives, in high speed rail, in broadband access, in providing health care, in managing our debt, in maintaining our infrastructure, and worst of all, in educating our children, and ourselves.

It is, oddly, a book ostensibly about baseball, where a description of at least one way out can be found. The book is called Moneyball and it was written almost a decade ago. If a much delayed movie is ever made of it, the book will get a new life, but it is questionable whether its message will be entirely absorbed.  This is as close as it can be summarized in a single paragraph within its fascinating page, and it is actually something written by the current owner of my beloved Red Sox, talking as much about how he became wealthy as about baseball:

Many people think they are smarter than others in baseball and that the game in the field is simply what they think it is through their set of images/beliefs. Actual data from the market means more than individual perception/belief. The same is true in baseball.

The same is true everywhere, but that is not accepted by the culture in which we exist. Many of us watched as John Glenn orbited the earth 38 years ago today and wondered what other magnificent sights we would see as the hard work and thought which resulted in that achievement are applied to the world we live in but our hopes have been dashed by people who tell us that government is not the answer but the problem and to whom facts and data are just soooooo---boring---or irrelevant.

One fact certainly does not matter. It is not important whether Ben Franklin really said that the constitutional convention had established a republic if we can keep it. The thought is a good one, and the question remains quite unanswered.

No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity.

--Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1821.