To Hell in a Hand basket, or not.
Two studies have floated into my attention on the steady destruction of America. The annual poll account for the “Fourth of July” on how we suppose the Founding Fathers would look at America shows that upwards of 70 percent think they’d shake their heads furiously and arch their eyebrows. And, David Broder floated in his column an item I knew about years ago of a study of presidential Inaugural addresses showing that they used to be smart and are now dumb.
The first matter deserves a bit of a snarky: the founding fathers would wonder why the hell they have to answer to a slave, three quarters of a person, or a woman, isn’t their place in history designing American flags?, every so often in our daily lives. I almost want to suggest some truth to the Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure story that they would be amazed at the sight of, say, a water slide, but I think they can be acclimated to future doo-dads well enough to conceptualize our world relatively quickly. (And actually a better and more literary reference for my cross time culture shock might come from … um… Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.)
That being said, the key of the poll is the comparison to the poll results for the year July 4, 2001, where a majority of Americans thought the Founding Fathers would view our America favorably. What happened in the meantime?
The latter study is interesting. But the deterioration is only problematic with concern with how it has played out from the advent of television onward. Which is to say the problem is that nineteenth century presidents were largely not talking to the “Common Clay” by means of mass communication, and is favorable from that stand-point — particularly up to that great flash point Broder points us to with Woodrow Wilson– in that it’s a sign of — to one degree — the democratizing of our politics. That being said, yes, the pleas to “common sense” is troubling — always served as much a crutch to pass away differing opinions as anything else — but…