Sarah is Cranky

For John, BLUF:  Maybe it isn't good for everyone to be all excited about politics.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Fiction writer Sarah Hoyt is cranky and lets us know it.  Her blog post is "A State of Ignorance and An Ignorance of State".

She is in a lather over people who are in a lather over the fact that most Americans don't really have a handle on either government or politics.  By government, I mean the Constitution and how things work, or don't, from Capitol Hill, in DC, to their local town or city.  As a point of reference, when, in the Blog Post, she says "partly because I lived in times when not knowing who was likely to gain power the next turn could cost you your life (a lot of people become engaged in those circumstances)" she is talking growing up in Portugal under Salazar up through the Carnation Revolution.

Somewhere in the Blog Post she says:

The problem we have right now is the confusing of politics with social clubs.  A lot of this has always happened.  Hereditary democrats who don’t believe anything the democrats are promising vote democrat because their local Ward people met their immigrant grandfather coming off the boat and helped.  So, in gratitude, they keep voting democrat.

But it is worse now, because there are a lot fewer other (local) clubs and sports are less … uh… fewer people care about sports.  So people identify with a party in the same way that people would identify with a sports fandom.  They vote democrat because their neighbors do.  Other people do it was a status thing “All of my industry votes democrat.  It’s what smart people do.”

As I said, this has always happened, but it’s become more so as the mass media – note I used all democrat above.  There’s a reason – has worked very hard to foster this kind of clubbish partisanship.  (Including reporting everything stupid a republican says and keeping mum about things like Guam tipping over and/or having to pass the law to find what’s in it.)

She wraps up the blog post thusly:

Pray.  Pray very constantly that the crash isn’t bad enough to wake the rest of the people.  PRAY that there is never a state of affairs where your survival depends on almost everyone knowing the constitution and being able to tell you if they’re for or against each amendment.

Because that will mean a state of unimaginable chaos and fear and possibly a tri-or-four part civil war.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.  Let’s hope it’s never required that the majority of the people be THAT well informed.

Hat tip to the Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff