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Time to scrutinize the 'restoration' experts
Take power away from liberal intellectuals, say some, and put "ordinary" people in charge.
Or make this a white-run, Christian nation.
Or insist on leaders who are intelligent and informed.
Or stop wasting American lives in pointless wars.
Or honor truth-telling and stop allowing ideologues to finance phony "research" to serve their interests.
Or restore traditional marriage and family life.
Or allow new forms of marriage and family.
On and on they go, prescriptions of astonishing contradiction, grounded in smoke, expressed in absolutes, claiming the moral high ground while denigrating opposing views as morally repugnant.
What these solutions have in common is a belief that America needs "restoring," that something is fundamentally wrong in America, that America has lost its way and is in danger, and -- here comes the money pitch -- that they alone know how to fix it.
It's an old form of argument, of course. In debate it's called the "straw man." I deflect the point you made by insinuating that you said something else, something profoundly stupid.
Or as Sarah Palin said at the "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington: "Say what you want about me, but I raised a combat vet, and you can't take that away from me" -- as if someone had been denying her son's military service.
In marketing it's called "selling the problem." Before you can sell diet products, first convince people they are fat. To sell hatred, first convince people they are being hated.
In religious history it's called "scapegoating." Denominations stir solidarity by declaring themselves under attack. To stir rage among working-class Americans, tell them that the college educated look down on them.
In everyday life it's called lying. To rescue a dying candidacy, fabricate stories about illegal immigrants and blame them for falling property values and distressed retirement portfolios. To stir anti-Islamic rage, misstate the facts about a cultural center planned for lower Manhattan.
We buy it, because we sense that something does need restoring. Something is wrong. We aren't sure what. Money seems unusually tight. Jobs seem scarce. Our children don't have bright futures. Yet another government seems helpless. Bewildering enemies point weapons and vitriol our way.
As we feel "nameless dread," politicians, charlatans and demagogues are eager to give us the "name."
Rather than think clearly, we give in to passions. Rather than seek facts, we welcome invective that expresses our fears. Rather than honor the complexity and ambiguity of the world we live in, we grasp at simplistic notions.
None of this is new. Every demagogue invents enemies for him to squash. What seems new, in an age of information overload and vanishing credibility, is that every rumor and lie, every piece of phony research, every campaign fabrication gets taken seriously -- not so much because we are gullible, but because we are desperate for answers and here is someone whose answer feels right.
We want to name our dread, and here is an enemy-namer who seems sincere and claims to be one of us -- wearing shirt sleeves! Never mind that actually waging war on that enemy would accomplish nothing and might make matters worse.
A maybe-truth that happens to agree with one's predispositions and fears is more satisfying than an actual-truth that requires one to think again.
It's time to scrutinize the restoration experts.
-- Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of "Just Wondering, Jesus" and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter@tomehrich.
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