All of you probably have heard, or actually argue, some form of the following:
- Practical arts - business, science, service or activism/mission-work - make the world a better place
- People sitting around and reading books does nothing for the world, and their lack of experience makes them ask stupid questions
- People sitting around reading books about politics are the worst of all, because real politics is when people are doing, not talking
That last point about politics can't be emphasized enough, since in a democracy the idea that someone could know better than you about politics is unacceptable. Hence, every single person online knows better than President Bush, whether they defend him or not. No one defends him by saying he's privy to knowledge we don't have; we who defend him attack his sources of information just like those who said he lied about WMD's.
If someone knows better than you on a topic, that means what they have to say on that topic is more important than what you have to say. So we emphasize doing as a way of keeping knowledge out of politics, and keeping us all equal. No politician can do anything right, they're all scum and in an ideal world, government wouldn't exist. Since all political speech is characterized by "truthiness" and spin, the only speech that matters is ours, and since no one else really knows anything anyway, the only speech that really matters is mine.
That's the entire logic of our world today. In more sophisticated terms: our belief in progress is so unyielding that it annihilates diversity: either you stand with me or against me. Once diversity is destroyed, politics is also gone - the only reason why politics exists is because people think differently, and they shouldn't. Complete selfishness and anarchism go hand-in-hand, science and markets tell us we can have everything.
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