History as Psychology

Richard Hofstader has his detractors. He was a historian at Columbia University, and George F. Will described him as the quintessential example of the condescending liberal because Hofstader wrote The Paranoid Style in American Politics which offended Will because it so clearly portrayed the very sort of reactionary Republican we see today in Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and, that Zelig of Republicans, Mitt Romney, as a deranged and truth-be-told, psychopath.

Professors of history decried Hofstader's penchant for using secondary rather than primary sources in his review of the past, but this is an irrelevant and essentially effete criticism: What do I care how Hofstader arrived at the truth? I care whether or not he can see the truth.

And looking at the mindset, or the psychology of the Rush Limbaugh's of the world is the only way to really understand their appeal.

What is just as, if not more important is looking at the psychology of those who are listening and echoing what they hear Limbaugh said.

Which brings me to the instance which prompts this posting. This week a forwarded email circulated around my office. It was a rant by a 21 year old woman who was incensed, outraged by something she had seen on Fox News: Down and Out types who has so little self respect they had actually stooped to using food stamps, were using those government hand outs for the undeserving to buy Ho Hos or some sort of junk food--the name escapes me--the modern equivalent of Twinkies.

This provoked a torrent of invective among the young women in my office, most of whom have children below the age of 10, and whose salaries average in the low $20,000 range.

The only email which had provoked the same level of contempt was a "Shoppers of Walmart" compendium of photographs of grossly obese or otherwise physically repugnant Americans, often wearing short shorts which barely contained their pelvic anatomy.

It fascinated me the fury all this provoked. There was no sympathy, only anger and revulsion at these people who were just one step or maybe a few steps below these office workers on the socio economic scale.

They had no such resentment toward those above them, at least none I've ever been able to detect. These people who have some high school, or graduated high school, or some community college do not blink an eye at the pie graphs showing the small sliver of wealth their own income group controls. They know they are struggling economically. They pay more than half their incomes in rent and food is a significant part of their cost of living. They are in and out of living with their parents, dealing with older cars which keep breaking down making them late for work, dealing with misbehavior of their children at school, phone calls from teachers or principals, and yet they see none of their own circumstances as being connected to what the top 1% or the top 20% are doing in the world, are doing to their world.

They have accepted since they do not have "qualifications" they do not deserve better. They have bought into the idea of a meritocracy so thoroughly, they accept their place at the bottom of the scale as deserved.

One woman, who I know particularly well, tried to take a course in "Anatomy and Physiology" at a local community college, which is required so she can get a certificate which says she is a certified "Medical Assistant." Now, this is a woman who has learned a great deal of practical physiology and medicine in the 5 years she has acted as an uncertified medical assistant. She is very bright, and she reads every chart before she passes it on to the doctor she assists and if there is a relevant lab missing, she notices that, and she gets on the computer and digs it out. She does a blood test on a patient and records the result but she doesn't stop there, she looks at the pattern of how that test fits with previous tests on the same patient, and she often hands the chart to the doctor and says, "Looks like Mr. Smith is burning out his insulin production. Bet he'll need insulin soon. I'm not telling you your job. I'm just saying."

She's almost always right.

But the course she took at the community college was taught by a martinet, infamous among the women who have to get past him, and she brought in the work sheets and exams this professor subjected his unfortunate students to and they were evidence of a special psychopathology. The other physicians I showed them to just laughed. The questions were: a/ about such minutiae as to be laughable b/ revealed the professor did not understand the very topics he was attempting to "teach" his students.

But he stood between his students and "certification."

The woman I am talking about dropped out of the course, defeated, convinced she did not deserve any better, did not deserve to be "certified."

The fact is, she is better, knows more, is more valuable to the patients and the clinic, and is more deserving of being called a "certified" medical assistant than 90% of those who have got that certificate.

Thus is the poisonous result of selling the notion of "meritocracy" to the American soul.

It would be one thing if true merit were accurately defined and identified, but it's quite another how the whole notion of who deserves the prizes is practically delivered in our current day American nation.