Earth Matters: Uninformed

I tried really hard, but I couldn’t get my mind out of the political gutter. I tried to conjure wonder; instead I couldn’t free myself of the mire that must be the stock and trade of punditry. I looked up “pundit” to make sure my obsession is an occupational hazard and not a personal problem. I discovered there is such a thing as a punditocracy: gods forbid.

Surrounded as we are by a natural world chock-full of wonder, I figured to distance myself—escape—our collective and disturbing social and economic context. I revel in the quickening smell of pine and Douglas fir, and make a point of appreciating terrain features as gravity draws me down the ski hill. I remarked on the first robin to light in the aspen trees outside my window…just before the blizzard hit. That’s about it, though; I failed my escape attempt.

I blame much of my failure on television. I can’t resist paying attention to pundits inside that box, men and women paid considerably more than me. I don’t begrudge that differential because although my deadlines are just as sharp and my responsibilities as well-defined, I don’t have to wear a necktie.

Before I used television, I formed independent, albeit sometimes uninformed opinions. Independent opinions are good because they require original thinking. Unfortunately, uninformed original thinking is only exercise and can actually be injurious. I work pretty hard to keep my foot out of my mouth and generally only make stuff up when I am sure either the muse or my editorial voice is active. Otherwise, it’s just the facts, ma’am.

But then the facts get filtered, and that’s where the television pundits have their say. True to my calling, I try to balance perspectives. That is, I try to listen to both liberal and conservative pundits, or at least get the gist of what they are saying. I admit to finding it difficult to listen to a Rush Limbaugh diatribe or sympathize in any way with Bill O’Reilly or Glen Beck. I honestly hope my antipathy isn’t as much for what they are saying as it is for how they say it.

Predictably, I enjoy listening to Daniel Schorr, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and—it figures—HBO’s Bill Maher. Maher’s commentary is often over the top, usually raunchy and sometimes not even funny. Maher had me at George W. Bush, though, and while he tries to give equal time to drilling Obama, I can tell his heart isn’t in it. Bush was easy pickin’s for all of us.

So I wonder whether punditry informs me. Do I actually learn anything by listening to talking heads? Perhaps it just entertains me because I either agree with what they say or it outrages me. Maybe commentary simply deludes me and I need to chase down something akin to fact, not opinion.

Fact is often elusive. It is naïve to take the maunderings of politicians and economists at face value. Trying to pin Bill Clinton down about the fact of his matter, for example, came down to what the definition of “is” is.

In our current economic malaise, politicians—even the smart ones—have no idea how to make things right because disaster has never quite looked like this before. It is ironic, sad and scary that economics falls into the bailiwick of politicians whose job description is kissing babies, cutting deals, and conducting—or not—diplomacy between nations. In our case, we exported economic collapse to the rest of the world.

Nor can economists, even those who invented the complex schemes that got us into the mess, provide a fix. They can only surmise what went wrong but have no clue where to go from here…wherever here is. Slogging through all the source smoke, mirrors and muddy water, pundits like me get to take their shot at it.

Bottom line: What our Great Recession says to me is that free-market capitalism doesn’t work. Ah, but that’s not exactly true. Unregulated free-market capitalism doesn’t work. But if a market is regulated at all then it isn’t free, right? Creeping socialism. Commie rat. Pinko freak.

Here is more blasphemy: Credit—debt—is a slippery slope off which average folks have a difficult time climbing. Debt generated by the federal government sums at such a grand scale we mere mortals can’t visualize or comprehend, much less pay it back. That is a slippery slope, too.

While I don’t presume to diagnose and propose solutions to world economic collapse, I can’t help wondering how borrowing more money to throw at the same miscreants who got us into trouble in the first place will fix anything. I’m pretty sure that is not original thinking and on practically every level must be uninformed. It seems only common sense.