How are we to survive as a nation if a respect for accuracy provides no shared point of reference in our public and private debates and disputes?
I start every morning with that question, and I end every day without answering it.
The features of our world that have corroded society’s respect for accuracy present themselves as overpowering: the booming business in the production of fake news; social media’s powerful role in creating and maintaining the echo chambers where the like-minded congregate; the president-electap persistent affection for falsehoods; the climate of distrust that has destroyed the credibility of every imaginable source of information or understanding; the frequently voiced, perhaps self-fulfilling impression that we have moved into a “post-truth” era.
Ordinarily, I shed discouragement so instantly that it never gets near my soul. But now, if I tried to feel worse about the impact on the nation of these forces, I wouldn’t know where to start. Contemplating the weakening of concern for accuracy, truth and fact, my reliable “Despair Reduction System through Historical Thinking” may have met its match.
To provide a pretty casual process with structure, I will lay out the three steps that have allowed my system to keep me on course: First, draw on historical perspective to assess contemporary dilemmas as accurately as possible; second, undertake a vigorous search for solutions; and third, do everything possible to persuade people to give these possible solutions the chance to succeed.
I will now give the Despair Reduction System an experimental run to see if it can still function in these difficult times. I’ll apply it to an urgent question: How are we to respond to the current upsurge of support for the reduction of environmental regulations and even for the abolition of some of the federal agencies that work in that terrain?
Step one, assessing the situation through the mobilization of historical perspective:
The federal agencies, ranging from the National Park Service to the Environmental Protection Agency, originated from recognitions, based on evidence, of major problems facing the United States. Those recognitions inspired good intentions to do something to deal with those problems. The good intentions fueled the passage of laws aimed at resolving the problems. The passage of these laws, in turn, led to the creation of federal agencies — a.k.a. bureaucracies — to put those laws into practice. In undeniable ways, the bureaucracies acted on the good intentions that first brought them into being, and in equally undeniable ways, the bureaucracies got snarled up in habits, routines and counterproductive practices.
On to step two, searching for solutions:
Reminding ourselves that impulsive efforts to reverse time and return to the past stand a good chance of reactivating the original problem, possibly in a more vexing form, we can imagine practices that might achieve a closer alignment between the operations of the federal agencies and the aspects of the common good that necessarily fall under the stewardship of national administration and regulation. And we can take precautions to ensure that our efforts at revising the laws that govern the agencies do not slide into efforts to erase the laws as well as the good intentions that brought them into being.
And now we have landed at step three, the effort to persuade people to give solutions a try:
I have tried to make an accurate, truthful and factual claim when I declare that historical perspective provides a far better framework for action than the tired approach of splitting the citizenry into pro-government and anti-government factions.
This statement should not escape close scrutiny. It would be a delight to learn that some readers of this column are willing to invest their time and trouble in checking the accuracy and truth of the historical framework I have presented here. It would be an even greater joy if they would communicate their appraisals to me with a well-crafted combination of a critical edge and a civil tone.
If that happens, despair will surrender its claim on my soul, and the buoyancy of my spirits will exceed the maximum federal standards permitted in these peculiar times.
Patty Limerick is Colorado’s state historian and faculty director and chair of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado.
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