What do I mean by “moron”? A human incapable of knowledge processing in societal interactions, similar to psychology definition where moron is a human with mild intellectual disability. Many use moron as a ”harm word.” I have no use for harm words. My usage is factual. My focus: the United States.
Which lens I use to see the United States a society of morons—a society of humans incapable of knowledge processing in societal interactions? The lens is the United States Congress and its two legislative bodies, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Mr. Mitch McConnell has been the senate majority leader since January 2015 and he is the number one moron on my societal list which also includes YOU and ME. How did I place him at number one? you ask.
To answer properly I have to give you a quick tour of what a “society” is and how it comes to be. To have a foundational view of the society one must have an understanding of the few-agree, many-agree, and all-agree positions that humans create in their interactions. Every human comes into the world with his or her own “few-agree positions.” These are like opinions that each individual has about the world. For a society to exist, humans have to turn some few-agree positions into “many-agree positions” and then pick a number of many-agree positions and turn them into “all-agree positions.” The many-agree and all-agree positions would bound the vast ocean of few-agree positions and make societal interactions possible. Human life has its foundation at stable and functional interactions within a well-designed matrix of many-agree and all-agree positions.
Every society needs an organizational structure for managing the society’s many-agree positions in order to decide which ones can be turned into all-agree positions. This is important because humans can achieve many-agree positions but NEVER an all-agree position. Human uniqueness and immense diversity of few-agree positions preclude that possibility. That is why every all-agree position has to be backed by societal force and FORCED on everyone that normally opposes it. It is the all-agree positions that we refer to as “law.” Do not align with an all-agree position—do not obey the law, and one would face the societal force in the form of police and armed forces.
In the United States the Congress is given the task of managing the society’s many-agree positions, deciding which ones should be turned into all-agree positions to be forced on everyone. Given the vast ocean of few-agree positions, the management of many-agree positions and the creation and maintenance of all-agree positions is most difficult. Many nations cannot manage it well and fall into the abyss of force-based confrontations, killing each other in the hope that someday someone will show up to manage the many-agree and all-agree positions in ways that would preclude killing one another in daily interactions. In the United States the judicial system manages the societal difficulties with all-agree positions. At its pinnacle sits the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the final ARBITER OF BALANCE in how the societal force is applied to many-agree positions to turn them into all-agree positions that are then forced on everyone.
Now comes Mr. Mitch McConnell. The situation is an empty seat on the Supreme Court. Who is to fill the seat? Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been nominated. Mr. McConnell has already destroyed a 60-percent-rule that the Senate had adopted for a very long time as the point of balance among competing many-agree positions for appointment of a justice to the Supreme Court. Now he is trying to get the nomination through a 51-percent arrangement. Let us hear him say how he sees what he is doing.
“In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court,” McConnell says to applause from religious conservatives. “So my friends, keep the faith, don't get rattled by all of this. We're going to plow right through it and do our job.” Mr. McConnell’s “We're going to plow right through it” lacks an understanding that the purpose of the United States Congress is not to force a conservative group’s many-agree position on all others but to create a balance among the many-agree positions that the society creates, especially through all-agree declarations—the laws that FORCE everyone opposed to a many-agree position to align with it as a societal all-agree position. Let me elaborate on that.
We always throw around words like conservative and liberal as designations for societally important many-agree positions that oppose one another, each vying to make itself the all-agree position to be forced on everyone else. By themselves, words like conservative and liberal are suitcase words that only carry ignorance and little knowledge about the corresponding many-agree positions. If I ask the users of these words to explain what they mean—to add knowledge into the suitcase of the words, they often come up with another suitcase word. “Oh, conservative means Republican; oh, liberal is Democrat.” Only rarely I come across someone that would say conservative/Republican stands for those that want to MAINTAIN A TRADITIONAL WAY OF LIFE and liberal/Democrat are those that feel THE TRADITIONAL WAY OF LIFE HAS TO CHANGE to accommodate the human needs. And if I say, “Give me a good example,” even fewer can come up with one. So let me give you one example of conservative versus liberal to demonstrate two things. First, they are natural features of human life and exist in every aspect of human life and not just politics. Second, the two must remain in balance, for otherwise they will destroy each other.
Here is an example that every human should understand.
My wife and I bought a house. She wants to remodel the kitchen. She wants to change it to better accommodate her cooking needs. She is acting as a LIBERAL. I see the kitchen fine as it is with no need for remodeling. That makes me a CONSERVATIVE. Now imagine each of us trying to FORCE the other to accept his or her view as the law of the house instead of seeking a BALANCE between those two positions? How long do you think the marriage would last if the two see “fighting” as the only alternative to achieve the desired conservative or liberal outcome?
And here is the dilemma.
We have placed in Congress humans that have no understanding of what the many-agree positions of conservative and liberal mean in daily human life. The people assigned with the task of “balancing the society’s many-agree positions” are now avid “balance destroyers.” Each wants to destroy the other at the first chance they get. Even though it is the most flimsy and a highly unstable arrangement, the two sides have agreed that the first to get to 51% can use societal force to destroy the one stuck at 49%. This is the narrowest margin for management of many-agree positions and an assured recipe for societal destruction. The next year when the 49-percenter manages to crawl back to 51%, it is its time to destroy the other side that has now dropped to 49%. Neither recognizes that they are destroying each other and in the process destroying the society. Perhaps in addition to listening to my example of remodeling the kitchen, the Congress should also sit and watch the movie The War of the Roses multiple times to get a better feel for what happens when the society splits into two factions bent on destroying each other than reaching a societal point of balance.
When I listen to Mr. McConnell’s “We're going to plow right through it” I am also amazed that he says so without any awareness of the history of the United States. Being blind to history and its lessons he assumes that his conservative nominee to the Supreme Court will be PERMANENT and that the 5-4 conservative majority that he is trying so hard to build into the Supreme Court will also be PERMANENT. If he had any historical awareness he would know that once the other side reaches 51%, all of his Supreme Court achievements can be reversed in a matter of a year or two. Let me explain—historically.
The constitution does not specify the number of the Supreme Court justices. It is the Congress that decides it. “Huh?” says Mr. McConnell. Moreover, despite the lifetime appointment, any member of the Supreme Court can be impeached and removed by the Congress. “Huh?” says Mr. McConnell again. So assume Judge Kavanaugh becomes Justice Kavanaugh this year. With a new administration and a new Congress in which Mr. McConnell is no longer the majority leader, FBI could be directed to find the truth behind Professor Ford’s story, and once demonstrated to be true, the Congress will impeach and remove Justice Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court and nominate and confirm a liberal justice in his place. “Oops,” says Mr. McConnell and adds, “Once we’re back at 51%, we’ll reverse it and replace their guy with another conservative judge like Judge Kavanaugh.” Just in case you didn’t notice, this is Mr. McConnell talking like a true “society destroyer.” But Mr. McConnell recovers from the doom and gloom of my scenario, smiles and asserts, “What if the FBI finds justice Kavanaugh innocent? Then he cannot be impeached. Then he is PERMANENT! Then the conservative majority is PERMANENT! Yay!!”
I hate to rain on Mr. McConnell’s parade and ruin his wide happy grin, but I have to remind him of the historical fact that the Constitution does not specify the number of the Supreme Court justices. It is the Congress that decides how many justices the Supreme Court can have. Initially it started as six, went down to five, back to six, and then to nine. At one time the Congress considered increasing it to 15. So, all that a 51-percenter has to do to ruin Mr. McConnell’s presumed advantage is to increase the number of justices to 11, appoint two liberals and Mr. McConnell’s 5-4 majority would change to a 6-5 minority. “Huh?” moans Mr. McConnell.
The truth: the Congress, the Supreme Court, the society, they are all human-made things. They are all human artifacts. We can make them to serve everyone or we can make them serve select groups. We can work to keep everything in balance, or we can choose to keep everything confrontational. At the moment, in the United States, we have chosen to split the country into two fighting camps and are steadfast that one or the other must win if the society is to prosper. What we overlook is that the winner WILL STAND on the RUINS of the society. There is no other alternative in a society built on confrontation of 51-percenters that are out of balance with society’s many-agree and all-agree positions.
I may sound like the bearer of bad news, but here is my ray of hope. Would Congress make every member read my book The Sucker Punch of Sharing so they learn the basics of managing the society’s many-agree positions? As professor I know that reading is never the same as learning. If they do read, would they learn that the role of Congress is not to force a favorite many-agree position on all others, but to reach a balance among all many-agree positions, especially any many-agree position that the society declares all-agree and backs by societal force to make it law? If what I am hoping would never see the light of the day, then that would be the proof that we are nothing but a society of morons, sending morons to Congress to destroy the society of morons. Perhaps that outcome is exactly what a society of morons needs and deserves.