A Root Of The Problem

It's bigger than education, though education is where it reared its head most recently.

It's there with every issue that has been framed as an attack on democracy, though that framing only scratches the surface. It's an issue baked into our country's foundation

Call it betterism. The belief that some people really are better than others. Some people really do deserve more power and privilege. Some people really do deserve a more important role in the culture and society.

It's not new. The Puritans of the Northern colonies were sure they were chosen by God. The plantation owners of the Southern colonies saw themselves as a new breed of aristocrat. And everyone thought they were better than enslaved Africans (that's why it was okay to enslave them). The framers set out a bunch of high-minded ideas, and we have spent almost 250 years trying to live up to them, sometimes with more success than others.

We fought a whole war about whether some human beings are better than others (and then allowed people who believed some really are better to claw back ground afterwards). The New Deal posited that maybe some people aren't poor and struggling because they deserve to be, and they actually deserve a hand. The Civil Rights Movement posited that maybe state and local government should not be allowed to codify Betterism into law. Women should get to vote and own things and be paid for work. Most recently, LGBTQ folks exist and have the same rights as anyone else.

But we are living through a broad rejection of that foundational idea of equal worth.

Complaints about political correctness and CRT and DEI and "woke" are expressions of, "Look, I know I am better than Those People and I am really tired of folks who tell me I am not, or that I'm not allowed to talk and act as if I am."

The return of "race science" to the conversation--an attempt to argue that science tells that some people are just born smarter and more capable-- better-- than others.

Read More Everything Forever, Adam Becker's book about the tech overlords of Silicon Valley and it's clear that they (like Elon Musk) believe that they are so much better that they deserve to steer the course of human history, to rule over the Lessers.

The currrent assault on immigrants, launched under the pretext of rolling up dangerous criminals, is now clearly aimed at all non-European immigrants, regardless of whether they are gainfully employed, contributing members of their community, trying to "do it the right way," or even fully legal residents. The actual argum,ent at play is clearly, "Those People do not deserve the same citizenship privileges I have."

The whole social safety net is under attack because it gives privileges and rights and power to Those People who don't deserve it. As Dr. Oz put it, Medicaid work requirements are just a requirement to "prove that you matter." Because, I guess, the mere fact of your existence as a human being isn't proof enough.

The Department of Education is an obvious target for Betterists because its primary purpose is to protect and enforce equity and non-discrimination.

LGBTQ persons (especially those Ts)? Pfrobably shouldn't exist, but if they do, they should have the decency to understand that they are Less than the rest of us, and hide their true nature from polite society. Certainly they should never have insisted on the right to marry.

People who have chosen not to worship the correct God in the correct way should understand that people who have chosen correctly are better than the poor choosers. And it's not just individuals. As Katherine Stewart put it, "It [Christian nationalism] asserts that legitimate government rests not on the consent of the governed but adherence to the doctrines of a specific religious, ethnic, and cultural heritage."

What reads as an attack on democracy in instance after instance is really an attack on the underlying premise, the notion that no person is better than any other. "End this foolish insistence," says MAGA, "that Those People are as good and deserving as their Betters. It's only common sense that some people are better, more deserving, more worthy than others, and it flies in the face of common sense to try to elevate Thoze People above their proper place." The Trump administration has been aggfressive in a host opf initiatives that can all be described as "Putting Those People in their proper place."

Privatizing education will have the effect of creating a multi-tiered system in which people of different status and power get different levels of educational quality for their children. For the Betterism crowd, this is a feature, and we should stop expecting them to care when we threaten them with what is, from their perspective, a good time. Education, their common sense tells them, should be about sorting young humans into their proper place and not about trying to elevate all of them.

For Betterists, society should be a variety of tiers, with different levels of power and privilege for each tier. It makes sense that the sc hools in such a society would also be separated into various tiers, and privatization in which everyone had to pursue an education armed with the resources they have would help establish those tiers.

The whole "this is an attack on democracy" argument holds little weight with the betterism crowd because they do not believe in the underlying ideas behind democracy. For them, people are not equal, and a system that tries to treat them as if they are or worse, tries to give the equal privilege, opportunity and attention, is simply immoral. You don't know how to explain to these folks that they should care about other people because they have already rejected your premise that all people are equally deserving of care. They don't hate the Lessers, but they do get angry when the Lessers won't simply stay in their proper place.

No, the conversation that's missing is the one in which we talk about how all people are people, equally worthy of love and support and attention and all the powers nd privileges that we would claim as an inherent right for ourselves. Until we've settled that conversation, conversations about threats to democracy will be stalled. Is this everything that's challenging us? No. But it's no small part.