Mickey and the scientists

It was a recipe for incongruity: a conference of social scientists earlier this month at a swank resort only a hop, skip and jump from Disney World.

The incongruity was found in matters of attitude and tone, with the academics a great deal more dour than the folks wearing Mickey Mouse ears at the Magic Kingdom.

Academics tend, of course, to be the most left-leaning of occupational groups, listing that direction to an even greater extent than media types, with those in the social sciences and humanities the most leftist of the left.

So it is never surprising that seldom is heard a conservative word at such conclaves. But this year the mood was even more somber than usual, with lots of fashionable skepticism expressed about venerable American political institutions, including the electoral college, the two members per state Senate, and the now presumably more right-wing, post-Anthony Kennedy Supreme Court (with, one suspects, the skepticism related to the extent to which such institutions are perceived as impediments to leftist transformation).

When it came to foreign policy, America got an even worse spanking: Wherever things in the world were going wrong it was America's fault, wherever things were going well (admittedly, far fewer places), it was in spite of America's malevolent influence. Indeed, it was remarkable how few positive things were said on behalf of a country about which one would think, given its crucial role in spreading democracy and freedom over time, it would be rather easy to say positive things.

Although logistically incapable of sampling more than a small percentage of the scheduled sessions, none I did attend seemed to pass without pervasive jabs and jibes at Donald Trump, however removed the topic at hand was from the office of the presidency or public policy per se or how "scientific" and dispassionate the pretense.

The overall effect was of a truly remarkable, almost statistically impossible, unanimity of opinion, to the point of raising serious questions regarding the objectivity of scholarship coming from such quarters. If any conservatives were present, they were prudently keeping it to themselves.

It was also a splendid, if somewhat redundant, excursion into the practice of virtue signaling, of communicating that it wasn't learned psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists like themselves that put the odious one in the Oval Office.

But that's also where the incongruity hit home, because the sort of folks who likely did disproportionately support Trump, the real-life "deplorables" and "clingers," were just down the road, waiting in line to ride It's a Small World or Splash Mountain and have a meet-and-greet lunch with Pooh Bear.

Although the evidence was purely anecdotal, derived as it was from only a couple of days of participant observation with 3-year-old in tow, the overflowing crowds at Disney didn't seem to share the pessimism about American life that the social scientists a couple of miles over were exhibiting.

No one at Disney seemed to be aware that the republic was now endangered by the elevation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and there weren't even any hoots or guffaws when Trump's animated figure was introduced at the Hall of Presidents show.

Everyone seemed to be having too much fun to notice that they lived in a land hopelessly pervaded by sexism, racism, and homophobia.

If anything, what was going on at the Magic Kingdom and related environs was wondrously apolitical in nature, and thus almost certainly more representative of the sensibilities of the American body politic.

The hunch was that both the folks at Disney and the social scientists were enjoying themselves in their own ways; the former by riding roller coasters and snapping photos while their kids hugged Minnie Mouse, the latter by comparing notes on America's swift descent into fascism under the ogre Trump.

All of which had the effect of reaffirming some long-standing conclusions regarding the political left in a capitalist republic like ours (and if anything so neatly encapsulates capitalism, it is Disney).

First, that for the left everything is about politics, while for most everyone else politics doesn't matter all that much, at least compared to family, career, church, sports and gearing up for a trip to the recently opened Toy Story Land.

Second, that the left and non-left view their country in markedly different ways--whereas non-leftists see America as a generally good, even great place, the left sees it as generally awful, with the awfulness mitigated a bit when lefties are in power (for example, the Obama years) but reverting fully to form and then some whenever conservatives hold the levers (as now).

For the left, the American people are salvageable when they vote them into power, but a repository of bigotry when they elect conservatives, and America's political institutions are to be revered when they produce results that leftists approve of, to be denounced as inimical to democracy when they don't.

Bill Buckley once famously said that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty.

Substitute the throngs at Disney for the Boston phone book and the social scientists at their confab for the Harvard faculty and the proposition still holds.

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 10/22/2018

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