A few weeks ago, the Canadian science fiction writer Peter Watts was convicted of “assaulting” U.S. border guards because he failed to listen/heed instructions to remain in his car when he was pulled over for a search at a border crossing.  Although the guards’ testimony that Watts had physically assaulted them was refuted, Watts was found guilty because, under the law, failure to follow instructions constituted “assault,” although the only action he took was to be stupid enough to get out of his car when he was told not to.  While he was fined and given a suspended sentence, as a now-convicted felon, Watts will henceforth be denied entry to the United States, and, if he were careless enough to sneak in and were discovered, he’d be in much more serious trouble.  While more than a few readers and supporters were outraged at Watts’s treatment, Watts and others were even more outraged at a law that classes “failure to obey” the same as assault.

Unfortunately, this sort of legal trickery and legerdemain has a long and less than honorable history in the United States, and probably elsewhere in the world.  The American justice establishment has found a number of indirect ways to place people in custody and otherwise convict and sentence them.  Perhaps the most well-known was the conviction of the gangster Al Capone, not for the murders, fraud, and mayhem he perpetrated, but for, of all things, income tax evasion.

In 1940 the Congress passed, and the president signed the Alien Registration Act, otherwise known as the Smith Act, which made illegal, among other things, either the membership in any organization which advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government or even helping anyone who belonged to such an organization.  In effect, that meant the government could legally prosecute anyone who had ever been a member of the Communist party or anyone who ever helped anyone who had ever been a member of that party with any party-related activities, no matter how trivial. Initially, the Act was used only against those who had actually been involved in such activities, but in the late 1940s, the FBI and Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities charged thousands of Americans with violation of the provisions of the Smith Act. If someone admitted helping another who had belonged to the Communist Party, they could theoretically spend up to 20 years in jail.  If they denied it and proof was found otherwise, they were guilty of perjury and could also go to jail.  Eventually, the Supreme Court declared many of the more far-reaching interpretations and prosecutions under the law unconstitutional, but not before hundreds of people had been sent to jail or had their lives and livelihoods destroyed, either directly or indirectly, for what often amounted to association with friends and business associates.

Flash to the present.  According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Form No. 1651-0111 asks the following questions:

Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage, or in terrorist activities, or genocide, or between 1933 and 1945, were involved in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?

Are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?

Now… it’s a safe bet that no one will ever check the “yes” box following either one of these questions, and many people will ask why the government bothers with asking such stupid questions.

The government knows no one will ever admit to either set or acts or intentions.  But… if anyone is ever caught even doing something immoral, not necessarily illegal, if the prosecutors can’t come up with as much evidence as they’d like to lock someone away, they can dig out the handy-dandy form and charge the “entrant” in question with perjury, etc.  It’s effectively a form of after-the-fact bureaucratic insurance.

Personally, I can’t say that it exactly reinforces my confidence in American law enforcement’s ability to find and prosecute the worst offenders when every immigrant who even shop-lifted or visited an escort service could be locked away.  But then, they did lock up Big Al, even if they couldn’t prove a thing against him on the worst crimes he ordered or committed.  So… maybe I shouldn’t complain.  Still… Peter Watts is now a felon for what amounts to stupidity, or at the least, lack of common sense, although he never threatened anyone or lifted a hand against either guard.

As many of you know, I live in Utah, and as most of you may not, I was the Legislative Director for William Armstrong, one of the most conservative congressmen and senators of his time, as well as the staff director for Ken Kramer, his successor in the House – also one of the most conservative congressmen, not to mention being Director of Legislation and Congressional Relations for the U.S. EPA during the first Reagan administration.  These days, however, even as a registered Republican, I seldom vote for Republicans, and what follows may explain one of the reasons why.

Utah’s two U.S. senators are Bob Bennett and Orin Hatch, both conservative Republicans, and according to the various political ratings, they’re among the most conservative in the Senate.  BUT… they’re not “perfect,” with Bennett receiving “only” an 84% rating and Hatch only an 88% rating from the ultra-conservative American Conservative Union. According to recent polls, over 70% of the GOP delegates to the Utah state Republican convention believe that both Hatch and Bennett should be replaced because they’re not conservative enough.  Bennett is up for re-election and probably will not even win his party’s nomination.  He might not even survive this week’s coming party convention.

Now… although I certainly don’t believe in or support many of their policies and votes, I can see where others might… and might wish for all their votes to follow “conservative” principles – but to throw out a three-term conservative incumbent over such ratings?  Does it really make any sense?

No… it doesn’t, and that’s not because I’m a great fan of either senator.  I’m not.  But here’s why replacing Bennett – or Hatch – is totally against the so-called conservatives’ own best interests.

First, the ratings are based on “political litmus test” votes, often on issues that indicate ideology and don’t represent votes on bills that actually might make a difference.  Second, the “difference” between Bob Bennett’s 84% rating and a perfect 100% rating represents all of four votes taken over the entire year of 2009.  Second, seniority in the Senate represents power.  It determines who chairs or who is the ranking minority member on every committee and subcommittee, and that helps determine not only what legislation is considered, but when it’s considered, and what’s actually included in it.  The Senate is an extremely complex body, and it takes years even to truly understand its workings.  To toss out an incumbent who is predominantly conservative, but not “perfectly” conservative, in favor of a challenger who may not even win an election, but who, if he does, has little knowledge of the Senate, and less power, is not an act of conscience, but one of stupidity.  Third, no matter how conservative [or how liberal] a senator is, each senator is restricted by the rules of the body to voting on what is presented. In the vast, vast, majority of cases, that means that the vote of an “imperfect” conservative can be no different from that of a “perfect” conservative.

I can certainly see, and have no problem, with conservatives targeting a senator who seldom or never votes in what they perceive as their interest, but to remove a sitting senator with power and influence who votes “your way” 80-90% of the time in favor of someone who may not win the election, and who will have little understanding or power if he does… that, I have to say, is less than rational.

In the interests of fairness, I will point out that the left wing of the Democratic Party is also guilty of the same sort of insane quest for ideological purity, and that the majority of Americans are fed up with these sorts of extremist shenanigans.  But in the current political climate, where most Americans are fed up with Congress, they may well vote to throw whoever’s in office right out of office… along with Bob Bennett.  And then, next year, when legislative matters are even worse from their point of view… they’ll be even angrier… even though almost none of the voters will admit that everyone wants more from government, in one way or another, than anyone wants to pay for – except for those on the extreme, extreme right, and they want no government at all… and that’s a recipe for anarchy in a world as technologically and politically complex as ours.

The growth of high-technology, particularly in the area of electronics, entertainment, and communications, is giving a new meaning to the question of what is “real.”  As part of that question, there’s also the issue of how on-line/perceptual requirements are both influencing and simultaneously diverging from physical world requirements.

One of the most obvious impacts of the instant communications capabilities embodied in cell-phones, netbooks, laptops, and desktops is the proliferation of emails and text messages.  As I’ve noted before, there’s a significant downside to this in terms of real-world productivity because, more and more, workers at all levels are being required to provide status reports and replies on an almost continual basis.  This constant diversion encourages so-called “multitasking,” which studies show actually takes more time and creates more errors than handling tasks sequentially – as if anyone in today’s information society is ever allowed to handle tasks sequentially and efficiently.

In addition, anyone who has the nerve or the foolhardiness to point this out, or to refrain from texting and on-line social networking, is considered out of touch, anti-technology, and clearly non-productive because of his or her refusal to “use the latest technology,” even if their physical productivity far exceeds that of the “well-connected.”  No matter that the individual has a cellphone and laptop with full internet interconnectivity and can use them to obtain real physical results, often faster than those who are immersed in social connectivity, such individuals are “dinosaurs.”

In addition, the temptations of the electronic world are such, and have created enough concern, that some companies have tried to take steps to limit what on-line activities are possible on corporate nets.

The real physical dangers of this interconnectivity are minimized, if not overlooked.  There have been a number of fatalities, even here in Utah, when individuals locked into various forms of electronic reality, from Ipods to cellphones, have stepped in front of traffic and trains, totally unaware of their physical surroundings.  Given the growth of the intensity of the “electronic world,” I can’t help but believe these will increase.

Yet, in another sense, the electronic world is also entering the physical world.  For example, thousands and thousands of Asian young men and women labor at various on-line games to amass on-line virtual goods that they can effectively trade for physical world currency and goods.  And it works the other way.  There have even already been murders over what happened in “virtual reality” communities.

The allure of electronic worlds and connections is so strong that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of students and other young people walk past those with whom they take classes and even work, ignoring their physical presence, for an electronic linkage that might have seemed ephemeral to an earlier generation, but whose allure is far stronger than physical reality.…

Does this divergence between the physical reality and requirements of society and the perceptual “reality” and perceived requirements of society herald a “new age,” or the singularity, as some have called it, or is it the beginning of the erosion of culture and society?

Despite all the “emphasis” on improving education and upon assessment testing in primary and secondary schools, education is anything but improving in the United States… and there’s a very good reason why.  Politicians, educators, and everyday parents have forgotten one of the most special attributes that makes us human and that lies behind our success as a species – language, in particular, written language.

An ever-increasing percentage of younger Americans, well over a majority of those under twenty, cannot write a coherent paragraph, nor can they synthesize complex written information, either verbally or in writing, despite all the testing, all the supposed emphasis on “education.”  So far, this has not proved to be an obvious detriment to U.S. science, business, and culture, but that is because society, any society, has always been controlled by a minority.  The past strength of U.S. society has been that it allowed a far greater percentage of “have-nots” to rise into that minority, and that rise was enabled by an educational system that emphasized reading, writing, and arithmetic – the three “Rs.”   While mastery of more than those three basics is necessary for success in a higher-technology society, ignoring absolute mastery in those subjects for the sake of knowledge in others is a formula for societal collapse, because those who can succeed will be limited to those whose parents can obtain an education for their children that does require mastery of those fundamental basics, particularly of writing.  And because in each generation, there are those who will not or cannot truly master such basics, either through lack of ability or lack of dedication, the number of those able to control society will become ever more limited and a greater and greater percentage of society’s assets will become controlled by fewer and fewer, who, as their numbers dwindle, find their abilities also diminish.  In time, if such a trend is not changed, social unrest builds and usually results in revolution.  We’re already seeing this in the United States, particularly in dramatically increased income inequality, but everyone seems to focus on the symptoms rather than the cause.

Why writing, you might ask.  Is that just because I’m a writer, and I think that mastery of my specialty is paramount, just as those in other occupations might feel the same about their area of expertise?  No… it’s because writing is the very foundation upon which complex technological societies rest.

The most important aspect of written language is not that it records what has been spoken, or what has occurred, or that it documents how to build devices, but that it requires a logical construct to be intelligible, let alone useful. Good writing requires logic, both in structuring a sentence, a paragraph, or a book.  It requires the ability to synthesize and to create from other information.  In essence, mastering writing requires organizing one’s thoughts and mind.  All the scattered facts and bits of information required by short-answer educational testing are useless unless they can be understood as part of a coherent whole.  That is why, always, the best educational institutions required long essay tests, usually under pressure.  In effect, such tests both develop and measure the ability to think.

Yet the societal response to the lack of writing, and thus thinking, ability has been to institute “remedial” writing courses at the college entry level.  This is worse than useless, and a waste of time and resources.  Basic linguistics and writing ability, as I have noted before, are determined roughly by puberty.  If someone cannot write and organize his or her thoughts by then, effectively they will always be limited.  If we as a society want to reverse the trend of social and economic polarization, as well as improve the abilities of the younger generations, effective writing skills have to be developed on the primary and early secondary school levels.  Later than that is just too late.  Just as you can’t learn to be a concert violinist or pianist beginning at age eighteen, or a professional athlete, the same is true for developing writing and logic skills.

And because, in a very real sense, a civilization is its written language, our inability to address this issue effectively may assure the fall of our culture.

In last Sunday’s education supplement to The New York Times, there was a table showing a sampling of U.S. colleges and universities and the distribution of grades “earned” by students, as well as the change from ten years earlier – and in a number of cases, the change from twenty or forty or fifty years ago.  Not surprisingly to me, at virtually every university over 35% of all grades granted were As.  Most were over 40%, and at a number, over half of all grades were As.  This represents a 10% increase, roughly, over the past ten years, but even more important it represents a more than doubling, and in some cases, a tripling of the percentage of As being given from 40-50 years ago.  Are the teachers 2-3 times better?  Are the students?  Let us just say that I have my doubts.

But before anyone goes off and blames the more benighted university professors, let’s look at society as a whole.  Almost a year ago, or perhaps longer, Alex Ross, the music critic for The New Yorker, pointed out that almost every Broadway show now gets a standing ovation, when a standing ovation was relatively rare some fifty years ago.  When I was a grade-schooler, there were exactly four college football bowl games on New Year’s eve or New Year’s day, while today there are something like thirty spread over almost four weeks.  Until something like half a century ago, there weren’t any “divisions” in baseball.  The regular season champion of the American League played the regular season champion of the National League.  It’s almost as though we, as a society, can’t accept the judgment of continual success over time.

And have you noticed that every competition for children has almost as many prizes as competitors – or so it seems.  Likewise, there’s tremendous pressure to do away with grades and/or test scores in determining who gets into what college.  And once students are in college, they get to judge their professors on how well they’re being taught – as if any 18-21 year truly has a good and full understanding of what they need to learn [admittedly, some professors don’t, but the students aren’t the ones who should be determining this].  Then we have the global warming debate, where politicians and people with absolutely no knowledge and understanding of the mechanics and physics of climate insist that their views are equal to those of scientists who’ve spent a lifetime studying climate.  And, of course, there are the intelligent design believers and creationists who are using politics to dictate science curricula in schools, based on their beliefs, rather than on what can be proven.

And there’s the economy and business and education, where decisions are made essentially on the basis of short-term profit figures, rather than on the longer-term… and as a result, as we have seen, the economy, business, and education have all suffered greatly.

I could list page after page of similar examples and instances, but these all point out an inherent flaw in current societies, particularly in western European societies, and especially in U.S. society.  As a society, we’re unwilling or unable, or both, to make intelligent decisions based on facts and experience.

Whether it’s because of political pressure, the threat of litigation, the fear of being declared discriminatory, or the honest but misguided belief that fostering self-esteem before establishing ability creates better students, the fact is that we don’t honestly evaluate our students.  We don’t judge them accurately.  Forty or fifty percent do not deserve As, not when less than thirty percent of college graduates can write a complex paragraph in correct English and follow the logic [or lack of it] in a newspaper editorial.

We clearly don’t judge and hold our economic leaders, or our financial industry leaders, to effective standards, not when we pay them tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to implement financial instruments that nearly destroyed our economy.  We judge those running for political office equally poorly, electing them on their professed beliefs rather than on either their willingness to solve problems for the good of the entire country or their willingness to compromise to resolve problems – despite the fact that no political system can survive for long without compromise.

Nor are we, again as a society, particularly accurate in assessing and rewarding artistic accomplishments, or lack of them, when rap music, American Idol and “reality” shows draw far more in financial reward and audiences than do old-fashioned theatre, musical theatre [where you had to be able to compose and sing real melodies], opera, and classical music, and where hyped-up graphic novels are the fastest-growing form of  “print” fiction.   It’s one thing to enjoy entertainment that’s less than excellent in terms of quality;  it’s another to proclaim it excellent, but the ability to differentiate between popularity and technical and professional excellence is, again, a matter of good judgment.

In fact, “judgment” is becoming the new “discrimination.”  Once, to discriminate meant to choose wisely;  now it means to be horribly biased.  The latest evolution in our current “newspeak” appears to be that to judge wisely on the basis of facts is a form of bias and oppression.  It’s fine to surrender judgment to the marketplace, where dollars alone decide, or to politics, where those who are most successful in pandering for votes decide… but to decide based on solid accomplishment – or the lack thereof, as in the case of students who can’t read or write or think or in the case of financiers who lose trillions of dollars – that’s somehow old-fashioned, biased, or unfair.

Whatever happened to judging wisely?