Grassroots and Common Sense

 

Common Sense. Grassroots.

Both terms bandied about by the populist crowd that imply a connection with a pool of knowledge gleaned from generations of pioneers and builders who laid foundations of societies. Often held up by those who insist that there’s a huge disconnect between the governors and the governed. Both terms are now being manipulated by those governors in order to appease those disenfranchised by that very disconnection. Weaponized, in fact.

There’s no denying those characteristics that built our societies were important. Stubborn resolve, ingenuity, independence, and straight up mettle met some real life or death circumstances face on. Never say woah in a tight spot, my dad would say. When faced with adversity, that foundational knowledge pulled them through. When times were hard, communities pulled together to spread the load. When faced with gaps in knowledge to tackle new challenges, they sought advice from professionals who had that knowledge.

The problem is, the pool of knowledge that was garnered by agrarian pioneers and wildcat entrepreneurs has been contaminated and co-opted by clever information architects who have capitalized by feeding mis and disinformation to those grassroot adherents. A fearful and mistrusting population is much easier to manipulate than one whose actions are guided by evidence based knowledge. Those gaps opened by that mistrust are easily filled by misinformation vendors in order to destabilize the population and make it vulnerable to power hungry autocrats harvesting populist support.

So, as for Common Sense, I’m still a fan. And Grassroots ideology still has its place. There has to be a sensibility and simplicity in many decision making processes. However, we must, like those pioneers, defer to expertise when our knowledge meets its limits. Even if that expertise requires that we depart from those paradigms laid down by our ancestors. The reason we’re in a tight spot is because we followed the ruts that led us there.

Again, I don’t necessarily disagree with the concept of Grassroot Common Sense. I do take issue with those who hold it up as a banner declaring their allegiance to the common man and pretending to bridge that disconnect. All the while manipulating the populace by promoting the mistrust in the expertise that pulled them through adversity in times past. All the while seeding fear with misinformation and salving that fear with authoritarian nuance that only serves to consolidate power in fewer hands.

So, I cringe when I hear someone declare their grasp on Common Sense, and my suspicions raise when someone promotes a Grassroots movement. Both concepts are now merely ideologies of the misled. Both labels applied to angry mobs gathered at coffee shops, town halls, and roadside protests. Both stark evidence of an insidious movement to replace knowledge with intuition and discredit evidence based scientific process and critical thought. Both tools of authoritarian demagoguery.

The casualty is not just of those terms held in some regard not that long ago, it’s of those people conscripted into the movement that has poisoned those terms. Among them many friends, neighbors, and family members. People I once regarded as being sensible and down to earth. It truly has exacerbated the disconnect between factions it pretends to be healing.