Paranoid Personalized Politics

The following is a famous quotation about intelligence/ critical thinking variously attributed to folks like Eleanor Roosevelt and Einstein.

People with extraordinary minds, talk about ideas.
People with average minds, talk about events.
People with simple minds, talk about other people.

The quote mirrors the levels of analysis; from subjective opinion (people) though facts (events) and to thoughtful interpretation (ideas). Everyone operates at all three levels, though too often not in an integrated way. Critical thinking involves the logical integration of all three levels of analysis in the effort to answer a complex question.

The practitioners of Paranoid Personalized Politics are trapped in the lowest level of analysis (people) to the extent that both the factual and conceptual levels of analysis serve only to reinforce their emotionally driven feelings about politics. An inability (or unwillingness) to logically integrate facts and ideas with their emotion laden opinions leads to political positions and arguments in which everything is attributed to the intentions, actions, etc… of people (individuals and/or groups).

These are the folks who see liberals or conservatives as the root of all evil. They attach blame to people or groups as if systems, environments, and other relevant factors are absent leaving only good and bad people to praise and blame. Longmeadow, like every small town, has at least its share of PPP. Right now the small band of lunatics opposing the new high school project are providing us with a very stark example of PPP. Their opposition to the project is %100 rooted in distrust and dislike for certain people, and/or a certain kind of people. They claim that these evil people who want to tax the elderly out of their homes have literally “conspired” to manipulate the Massachusetts School Building Authority to fund an excessively expensive new school instead of a renovation.

Specifics claims like Jerry Nolet’s assertion that the new building was a taj Mahal supported by guilt ridden working moms, and Mr. Fregeau’s charge that communists among us want to close the library and get rid of the books, are comical but also sad and a bit scary. Not to be outdone, Mr. Wojcik decided to falsely accuse a university professor and Select Board member of having “no use for the [Storrs} library.” He even claims to have a quotation to that effect.

What evidence do they have for their counter-intuitive (to say nothing of counter-factual) claims? They have out of context quotes from letters that have been publicly available and publicly discussed by proponents of the project. In a comical effort at cleverness, these folks who claim to be for “A Better Longmeadow” submitted a Freedom of Information request for these letters that have been publicly available all along. All the better to sell a conspiracy theory, no doubt. The fact that their charges of conspiracy were directly refuted by the MSBAs executive director while in Longmeadow speaking about the project, only adds fuel to the engine of this dastardly conspiracy. Of course she denied it! That’s exactly what we’d expect from an evil doer, right?

While this sort of behavior is usually harmless, since the vast majority of Longmeadow voters recognize this irrational paranoia, it is still something we must nip in the bud. Our particular form of government, which requires that any significant investment decisions be to the voters, creates opportunities for these paranoid fantasies to produce very counter-productive decisions about local governance.

We can’t afford to spare the feelings of folks like Mark Gold, Roger Wojcik, Jerry Nolet, and Philip Fregeau. We have to be brutally honest with voters about the emotionally and intellectually immature approach of these perpetual gadflies before they do serious harm to the financial stability of our town. We cannot afford to let their foolishness cost us our high quality public services, like the library and senior center, which ironically would only be in jeopardy if these fools succeed in misinforming the voters. They have to be called out loudly and clearly. We have to shine a bright light on their baseless, irrational, rantings if we want to protect our town’s historic identity and values.

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.