Power and Thought

Freddie D. puts it out there

The 1619 Project panic, critical race theory, the recent debate about whether people are/were taught in school that slavery was bad - it all proceeds from the same misconception, one shared by many on left and right alike, that what people are taught about history becomes what they know about history and that what they know about history has some material impact on how they think and act and vote. I don’t think any of those things are true. It’s the sort of thing you start to believe when you’re quietly resigned to the idea that you can’t actually solve real problems directly with the application of power. So you tell the universe, “But at least we understand! We, the moral vanguard of history….”

From Freddie deBoer’s newsletter [emphasis mine].

Let us examine that a moment. Picking what to emphasize was difficult. Effectively deBoer seems to saying that persuading people about the nature of reality is a waste of time, because people’s grasp of history and reality doesn’t affect their actions, only the direct use of power does that. What that says about Freddie¹, and perhaps the American left in general, bears consideration but will have to wait for another day. For now, let’s just focus on the implications of the last emphasized sentence.

What would we consider a real problem today that we can actually solve directly with the application of power?

• Racism (anti or standard)?

• Corruption?

• Poverty?

• Unemployment?

• Political polarization?

• Global warming?

With the possible exception of using power to end corruption (I am not sure we have ever tried that, usually because the corruption stems from power) all of those have been attempted by use of government power and have failed, or been made worse. How does one use power to solve these issues directly?

One wonders then how much the goal is to solve these problems and how much the goal is to wield power for its own sake. Given history, it seems unlikely that the only thing keeping us from utopia is someone being willing to exercise power to get us there.

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Is there perhaps some problem to which we can apply power directly and get it solved?

Maybe crime, but how to apply the power there seems to be a bit tricky, and there are many reforms to many policies and programs that probably need to happen as well to reduce the crime level, besides. Yet the Giuliani era of NYC suggests that maybe there are some direct changes in policy that can improve crime, should we care to do them.

One might argue illegal immigration, although you would have to agree that it is a problem. Still, you could probably get somewhere with direct power if your goal was to limit people walking across the border or overstaying visas.

That’s about it, though… that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

The list is short not just because I lack imagination², but because humans lack the knowledge of how to solve the problems we have, not because policy makers lack the will to force people to do what they want. There is not some solution to all our problems sitting on the shelf, just waiting for someone to stop being evil for five minutes and apply it. Some problems might not be solvable at all, and others require a level of understanding we do not possess.

Just because you have power doesn’t mean you can use it to get the ends you want.

1. I am hoping that I am misreading this paragraph, but it seems that deBoer considers the misconception that history (and thus reality) matters is what you convince yourself of once you give up on the truth that power can be used to solve problems.

2. Feel free to point out my failures of imagination in the comments!