entrails

JON CARROLL / SF CHRONICLE
Monday, June 20, 2005

I wrote a column last week about the general wretched state of things among the current governing classes, and I got more negative e-mail. Maybe the column got linked to some right-wing Web site; I'm not sure. One note came from a man who called me a "morron," which was lovely. And I got two that started more or less the same way: "Thank you for telling us what to think." I believe that was meant sarcastically.

They weren't form letters; I got a rashette of those, but these were not. What interested me was the resentment behind the phrase. I have long been amazed at the tendency of Republicans to still feel aggrieved and angry, even though they control both houses of Congress, the presidency and pretty soon will control the Supreme Court. There was a battle, and they won -- why do they still behave as though they lost? Why do they keep attacking like cornered animals? Why do Republicans whine so much? Whining in victory is just impolite.

I know there's a feeling that smarty-pants academics and lawyers and show- business executives have been denigrating middle America, or conservative values, or Christianity. That is, of course, true, just as conservatives have been denigrating academics and lawyers and show-business executives. But the pants of smartness tend to live on the coasts, in large rooms in large cities, and to take up a lot of room in the culture. They are the elite. Conservatives would say "self-styled" elite, but it wouldn't make the right wing crazy if it were just self-styled. I'm sure it occurs to a lot of people that the elite are telling them what to think.

I have a lot of problems with George Bush, but I would never complain that he was telling me what to think. I'm not sure what kind of resentment "telling me what to think" is. I'd call it a class resentment, but we'd have to get a new definition of "class."

Here's the problem with that mind-set -- not all facts are created equal. Indeed, not all "facts" are facts. Some "facts" are really opinion, and they may or may not be useful ways of looking at reality. But some "facts" are just bits of bad data. The moon is not a balloon, the Rocky Mountains are not made of Gouda, and "disassemble" does not mean "lie."

AIDS is not spread through tears or sweat, and saying so 300 times doesn't make it right. When Sen. Bill Frist arrived at a diagnosis of Terri Schiavo by examining a videotape, he was wrong -- not because his diagnosis was wrong (although it was) but because you just can't do it that way. (If you think you can, you could save a lot of money on doctor's appointments -- just make a videotape of yourself and send it to your family physician, or your family senator.)

You can't vote on the truth. I don't care how many people believe it, there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. There is no evidence at all that Iraq was connected to the Sept. 11 disaster, and anyone who thinks otherwise does so without evidence, meaning that it is a faith-based belief.

And I think we may be at the crux of the problem. Some people may think that I am saying that their religious faith is wrong, and I am not saying that. I have no idea what supernatural spirits control the world or how they control it. As it happens, I believe in the power of prayer, but I have no idea how it works because I have never seen an effective demonstration of any causal relationship. Maybe prayer changes lives because people believe that prayer changes lives. Maybe it's the world's biggest placebo effect.

But faith does not work on every problem, any more than a screwdriver or a Venn diagram works on every problem. It is our challenge as humans to select the proper tool for the job. There's an ancient warning, "When you have only a hammer, everything looks like a nail." When you have only faith, everything looks like God's will. And that may be right, but you can't figure out that two plus two equals four by consulting with God, or the stars, or goat entrails.

(Well, maybe you could -- I have two entrails here and two entrails there, so I have one, two, three, four goat entrails.)

Really good teachers do not tell us what to think; they teach us how to think. I understand that there are a lot of people in the media trying to tell you what to think, and it is kind of depressing, all that opinion floating around without visible means of support. I resent it myself sometimes; I think maybe it's time to fire all the pundits and hire a lot more reporters.

Present company excluded, of course. I have two hungry mouths to feed, plus the opinion garden out back.

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I didn't much care for the Reagan administration, but at least those guys knew how to win gracefully. Generosity in victory? That's such 20th century thinking.

Well you know that it's a shame and a pity, you were raised up in the city and you never learned nothing 'bout jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.