Some of us chide the Tea Party congressmen for their ignorance, real or feigned, in such realms as economics and science. But those of us who know more, maybe a lot more, still don’t know everything; and most of us are like the Tea Partiers in not wanting to know so much that we end up doubting. Doubt is crippling.
Kass runs on page two, the flagship position in the Tribune‘s pundit armada. Way back on 23, the op-ed page of the same edition, Steve Chapman mused about the conservative mind-set. A libertarian, Chapman is firmly on the side of living free, but he’s a cool customer who doesn’t share Kass’s view that all is nearly lost. “Somewhere along the way, many conservatives became addicted to the fear of apocalypse,” Chapman wrote. “So even when their dire predictions fail to come true, they keep forecasting the worst possible outcome if they don’t get their way. . . . Cruz and his audience are in the grip of a mania that tells them we are hurtling toward catastrophe. There is no evidence that we’re about to go over a cliff, even if some people have gone around the bend.”
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All this makes melancholy reading because . . . well, because what does it matter? They attacked us. We responded. Their threat continues. Can I write with a straight face that all Americans must read Ahmed’s important book? Those Americans who do will come away from it thinking that the world is a more subtle and complicated place than it’s typically depicted as—but in many cases that’s what they already thought and are always pleased to be reminded of. The book will make little difference. “Ahmed’s belief . . . is that tribal peoples must be negotiated with,” Ruthven writes, “rather than cowed into submission by targeting their leadership.” But Ahmed understands how unlikely it is that this prescription will be followed. He concludes: “Hearing the voices of people from the periphery, one gets the impression of utterly normal and decent human beings bearing witness to the slow but inexorable destruction of their communities.”
There’s a level of wisdom at which fine books are written; but to fight a war or write a newspaper column or understand the world well enough to get by in it, it’s not necessary or even advisable to come anywhere close to that level. “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” wrote Alexander Pope. “Shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” It’s more fun to stay tipsy.
