The problem is not that politicians lie. Of course they do, but that is not the problem. The problem is that they are products of the society they seek to govern, and they need votes in order to govern, and in order to get votes, they need to say things the voters want to hear. It doesn't matter how honesty they say those things. What the voters want to hear is confirmation of whatever they already believe about what is wrong with country and what needs to be done to fix it, and on those issues, nearly all the voters are clueless.
The reasons for their cluelessness are many and complex. A few recent books have tried to diagnose the situation. Among them are Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz; Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, by Kurt Andersen; and The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, by Thomas M. Nichols. I do not agree with everything any of them says, but they all have much to say that more people need to know. Andersen in particular has some pertinent observations about the American mind just before and during the Civil War. He has nothing to say about the likelihood of another civil war, but he does argue — persuasively, in my judgment — that the problems he identifies have only gotten worse since then.
I mentioned to some acquaintances a few days ago that in writing this journal, I was "trying to be Mary Chesnut." The attempt will utterly fail, of course. I don't move in the kind of circles she moved in. I am also nowhere near where any of the important current events are happening, aside from a terrorist attack about four years ago a few miles from where I live. Someone needs to be doing it, though. Others probably are, but I don't know them and one more can't hurt.
Like almost the entire rest of the world, I'd never heard of Mary Chesnut until I saw Ken Burns's miniseries on the Civil War. I have not read her diary yet, nor any of the others that Burns quoted from. I have no obvious reason to prefer her as a role model to George Templeton Strong, or Elishah Hunt Rhodes, or Sam Watkins. She just somehow made more of an impression on me than the others did. If it hadn't been her, I'd have said I was trying to be Sam Watkins. He is the only one who never had any more social status than I have.
(This page last updated on August 29, 2019.)