Notes from the Boonies

By Paul Wisovaty

The reader of past "Boonies" columns will recall my confusion, and occasional amazement, in regard to the thinking patterns of my fellow Americans. (Lest I be accused of putting on airs, I readily confess similar bewilderment at many of my own.) In a perfect world, this would be a non-issue. The 21st Century media flood us with information on every possible subject; literate voters process it, and we ought to wind up with near-consensus on everything from gay and lesbian marriage to Iraq. Presidential candidates, and even those poor slugs running for mayor of Tuscola, would be swept into office with 90% of the vote. I'm not the most religious guy in the world, but God did give us brains, didn't He?

Try this. Let's say Junior goes on national TV next week and says the following: "I lied to all you dumb bastards about the WMDs. I never believed for a moment Iraq had any. I sent your sons and daughters over there to die in the sand because I promised Dad I'd get rid of Saddam. But hey! Isn't the world a better place without him?" Were this to happen, I guarantee you that 75% of the people who work in the Douglas County Courthouse would still vote for him. What do we make of this?

I looked all over the house for my graduate degrees in psychology and political science, so that I could explain this to you, but I couldn't find them. (I guess they're kind of like those weapons of mass destruction.) So let's try a more credible approach.

Many readers will be familiar with James Loewen's book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me." There is a chapter in his book about the Vietnam War (who would've guessed?), and Loewen makes some interesting points. Unlike the present writer, he even backs them up with facts. I will not suggest that his findings in regard to Vietnam correlate precisely with our present dilemma in Iraq, and will leave that determination to the discerning reader.

It has long been a staple of American sociology that the Vietnam War was generally opposed by the better-educated among us ... and supported by those poor textbook-challenged drones who could never figure out how to work their way through a GED test. Not so, says Loewen, and he goes on to prove it.

Loewen reports that a 1971 Gallup Poll asked a random sample of Americans whether we should remove all U.S. troops from Vietnam by the end of that year. 73% said yes, and 27% said no. That is not particularly surprising. What is surprising is that "twice as high a proportion of college-educated adults, 40%, were hawks (supported the war), compared to only 20% of adults with grade school educations" who supported the war. Loewen admits that "these results surprise even some professional social scientists."

Professor Loewen goes to some length to explain this phenomenon, and I would encourage the interested reader to consult his book for a much better explanation than I am capable of rendering. With apologies to him for what will surely be an inadequate summary of his findings, please allow me a few short paragraphs to try to do that.

Better-educated, more successful Americans feel vested in this country, and accordingly in the decisions made by its leaders. There is a codependency of sorts at work. America, as a society which allows almost unlimited socioeconomic mobility, rewards its most industrious and virtuous citizens with better-paying jobs and accordant privilege. In their minds, and obviously to their advantage, America is seen as the ultimate meritocracy. And being so justly rewarded, do they not have an accordant obligation to this country? Of course they do, and not being ungrateful slackers, they are only too happy to fulfill it. They do this by serving in capacities which require and allow them to play disproportionately large roles in societal decisionmaking: as CEOs, teachers, politicians, judges, social workers, etc. I suppose the precise sociological terminology for this phenomenon is: "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."

Well, with all this mutual backscratching going on, it will be understood that neither party wants to be the first to rest its fingers. (I apologize if I'm getting too technical for you.) If I'm pulling in seventy thou a year sitting behind a desk exercising even a minor leadership role in society, why in the world would I want to entertain the notion that the entity which throws all these perks my way might be wrong? 'Cause if Mother Country's wrong, and Mother Country rewarded me, trusted me and, in the process, legitimized me, then is it possible that I'm wrong too? Say it ain't so, Joe Miller, say it ain't so.

Maybe all of this is why, as Loewen points out, better-educated Americans tend to be Republicans. (I know how Republicans would explain that, but we won't go there, will we? To be less-than-painfully honest, I'd like to leave you with a quote from my column in the Spring 2003 Veteran: "I have guys coming into my probation office, with ten years of education and driving a 1984 Ford Fairlane, who say to me, 'What the hell are we doing in Iraq? Saddam never threatened us. Don't we have enough problems in this country to worry about?' If my child molesters and drunks and drug dealers can figure that out, why can't all these Ivy League guys George brings in?" Why not indeed? And as I suggested in the Fall 2002 issue (you can look it up), "Poor people may be poor, but that doesn't necessarily make them stupid. Of course, they're not especially 'vested' either. Perhaps now that the minimum wage has shot all the way up to $5.65 an hour (in progressive Illinois), they can finally put their feet up on their desks, tell their secretaries to bring them some coffee, and start voting Republican."