By David K. Shipler
The United
States these days seems overrun by the indignantly incurious. They already know
everything. They take no pleasure in ambiguity. They bask in certitude,
entertain no doubts, and miss the beauty of seeing their preconceptions
contradicted by complexity. They populate the political left and the political
right, the halls of government, the studios of propaganda outlets masquerading
as “news,” and even college campuses. Most seriously, they refuse to listen to
those who disagree and even try to silence them.
Dogmatic
absolutists have always found places in American society: Jim Crow
segregationists, black-power separatists, white supremacists, true communists, red-baiting
conservatives, and ideologues of all stripes who never let facts get in the way
of a good screed.
But they have never gained as much
national power as today. This feels like something different. Where is the ballast
that has righted the country in the past? Has a tipping point been reached?
The problem is not just the “fake
news” that permeates the internet. It is the people who believe it. The problem
is not just the lying by Donald Trump and his minions--their fabrications about
imaginary surveillance, voter fraud, terrorist attacks, and the like. It is the
citizens who feed Trump’s frenzy by roaring approval without bothering to reach
for truth by checking the facts, which they could do online from home by evaluating
sources. It’s not such a daunting task.
Americans are split between those
who do just that and those who don’t, between those who are open and those who
are closed to the cross-currents of reality. This is a serious fault line
running through the United States, this divide between curiosity and complacency,
between those willing to accept challenges to their opinions and those who sift
out whatever they don’t want to believe.
