The Doubter's Companion Read Online Free PDF Page B

not communicate, why should the public consider these works relevant or important?
    It’s not that everyone must understand everything; but those who are not experts must see that they are being dealt with openly and honestly; that they are part of the process of an integrated civilization. They will understand and participate to the best of their ability. If excluded they will treat the élites with an equal contempt. See: CIVILIZATION.
    ANTS    Ants do nothing 71.5 per cent of the time. They are trying to think of what can usefully be done next. And this in spite of their reputation—shared with beavers and BEES—as hard-working role models for the human race.
    Most humans in positions of responsibility work more than 28.5 per cent of the time. It could be argued that, being brighter than ants, we need less time to think. This is a technically correct and reassuring argument. Yet a comparison of the incidence of error among ants versus that among human beings would not come out in our favour. We could counter that, by risking error, human society—or at least human knowledge—has progressed, while that of the ants remains stable. But if we are so bright, then why are we so eager to spend as long as possible on the non-intellectual tasks which hard work represents, while desperately economizing on the time spent thinking? An outside observer, an ant for example, might wonder whether we are afraid of our ability to think and more precisely of the self-doubt which it involves. See: HARD WORK.
    APPLE    Spherical object created by thirty-two chemical products, then dipped in wax, then gassed. In the long run an apple is as likely to bring on a doctor as to keep one away.
    APPLIED CIVILIZATION    A gift of the physically or economically stronger to the weaker. See: CIVILIZATION.
    APPLIED CORPORATISM    The mediocre usually gain power because of long service, corruption, back-room manipulations, error or luck. But from time to time they arrive at the top precisely because they are the accurate image of the power structure in place. And so occasionally, when a leader not good enough for the job wins office, the citizenry should be grateful for what amounts to a moment of truth.
    George Bush was the exact reflection of a corporatist society. In his experience and attitudes he combined the interests of several business and government sectors. The standard ideological view—both that of the Right and of the Left—was that the Bush presidency presented an opportunity for special interests to cash in. And of course they did, leaving some happy and others outraged. But the principal role of a corporatist leader is not to help his friends grow rich. They will do that anyway. Nor is it to worry about the management of any one interest group.
    The job of a corporatist president is to manage the relationships between the groups. In helping the arms industry to work with the Pentagon to work with the security agencies to work with the oil industry to work with the environmental agencies and so on, he encourages nationwide stability. If successful he will have indirectly eliminated interference from that rival system—citizen-based democracy—which technically maintains legal control over the constitutional structures of the Republic.
    Criticisms of the Bush presidency based on accusations of corruption or of upper-class social indifference or of deficient domestic economic strategies missed the point. Corporatist leaders do not have policy strategies any more than they have ethical standards. What they do believe in is the stable management of cooperation between interest groups. This, they are convinced, will make society work effectively.
    Even if the counterweight of ethics, democracy and justice is laid aside in such an argument, history proves the corporatists wrong. Interest groups are devoid of the broad common sense required to see beyond immediate