I fully expected the electronics revolution would create new jobs and new kinds of jobs. But things have not gone as predicted. As an example, on December 20, 1951, the day of my birth, electricity was first generated using nuclear power in a little test reactor in Idaho. It was widely predicted to be the dawning of a bold new frontier where power would be so cheap it would be free. Unfortunately when the reactor later blew up, the debris (and the technician who was killed) was so radioactive it had to be dissembled and buried in a toxic landfill that is still under armed guard. And yet how many people in 1951 predicted that fifty three years later one of the most highly paid jobs in America would not be Nuclear Scientist but the Nuclear Waste Cleanup Technician? It’s like the march of time took a wrong turn and left the parade route. It’s as if your funeral procession ended up at Coney Island.
Seriously, how many kids in your neighborhood dressed up on Halloween as an atomic janitor? Every boy wanted to be the handsome and brave yet shy nuclear scientist, and every girl (and a few of the boys) saw themselves as the lovely physicist with the slide rule in her purse and weak ankles in her high heels. Meanwhile workers at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in Nevada are guaranteed a well paying job for life; several lives, actually, and probably a couple of half lives to boot. And if their children should be born with an extra eye or two, or maybe a couple of extra fingers, all the better – give them a mop, a bucket and a radiation badge and they can go into business for themselves.
Asimov and Heinlein sure missed the boat with their visions of a future earth ruled by logic and science. And as we all know L.R. Hubbard must have been living on another planet entirely. But consider how far off the mark even the father of Sci-Fi, H.G. Wells, was. He concentrated on the guy who invented the time machine. But it turned out that if he really wanted to predict the future he should have told the dramatic story of the guy who cleaned up after him. History, it turns out, may be written by the winners, but the future is written by the guys who fix the plumbing.
And eventually plumbing brings us down stream to the subject of politics. I would have said that fundamentally politics is fundamental, unchanging through the ages. After all, a lie is a lie is a lie, and has been since Alcibiades claimed he was a traveling pillow inspector when caught falling out of a Spartan King’s bedroom window, while only the Queen was home. The only difference between Alcibiades and Gary Hart was that Alcibiades got away with it. But 24 hour news, blackberries, e-mail and little tiny cell phone cameras have revolutionized the lying business. We don’t even call them lies anymore. Today they are called “Talking Points.”
This is yet another new job invented by new technology. Any writer with a modicum of logic but too morally bankrupt to write ad copy, (or for Faux News) would have once upon a time become a newspaper editor to spread lies and filth to thousands. But today such purveyors of the dark arts toil to create talking points – spreading verbal manure to millions through other people’s mouths.
Talking points explain why Republicans and Democrats have become interchangeable. The individual politicians hardly matter anymore. Each reads from their respective parties’ talking points and the anchor’s use the talking points as frames to hang the debate on, so that modern political discourse has a great deal in common with professional wrestling. Nothing unexpected or unintended or honest is ever revealed in these pseudo public debates, for the purpose of talking points is not to refute or defeat your opponent’s talking points, but rather to obfuscate in unison, and by joint obfuscation to control the language used in the debate. Words are so much more important than their meaning.
The talking points have become such a crutch to journalism that anchors are currently critical of Democrats because they won’t stick to a script on what to do about the Iraqi war, while the Republicans are dependably, reliably on script. To be on script is now seen as a positive by journalists. While the Democrats seem to be thinking and speaking for themselves as individuals, which used to be celebrated as American virtues, it also makes the whole debate thing messy from a journalistic point of view, which must fit the debate on war and death into the ninety seconds between beer and laundry detergent commercials. What a shame the news writers are not as talented as those who are grinding out the talking points.
But who could have predicted fifty three years ago that such a profession would have attracted such talent? Probably only the plumbers; because if there is one constant through out the future of humanity, it is that there will always be plumbers because there will always be shit.
