One of the most fascinating things about the average - what a loaded word: average - US citizen is how they can be a mix of exceptional intelligence and incredible ignorance at the same time. The world mocked George W Bush for his seeming buffoonish nature; yet, Bush 43 was a twice-elected President of the United States and a twice-elected governor of the State of Texas, one of the most competitive political positions in the United States. George W may have taken the US to war on false pretences, but anyone who still believes that Dubya was a fool is living in a fool's paradise.
It is how someone can build a billion-dollar real estate empire and still behave as if he has never been outside of his native New York or pioneer cutting edge neurosurgery while still believing that the Great Pyramids of Giza are the biblical grain storage silos built by Joseph for the Pharaoh when the Pharaoh had a dream-vision about seven years of famine. It is how a Yale and Harvard graduate can spout nonsense about the national debt or the national deficit when trying to persuade his fellow senators that it is a good thing if the federal government does not function at all until his juvenile demands are met, the equivalent of "I will hold my breath until you do as I say" gambit.
For a rich and powerful nation, full of intelligent and innovative people, the United States has a surprisingly large number of people with disturbing quirks seeking high public office - and winning. But closer home, we have never been surprised at the large number of people with disturbing quirks who have sought and won high public office. This is entirely normal to us. It is why the promotion of voodoo economics, fuzzy maths, scientific arguments of doubtful merit, misogynistic justifications for discrimination and plain ignorance as righteousness do not arouse the displeasure of the people, and why liars, charlatans, murderers, thieves and philanderers receive our adulation and votes.
Some have been asking, in jest I am sure, what we did to God to deserve the government that we have; I believe that they are asking the wrong question. Our fate, even for those of faith amongst us, lies not in the hands of an Almighty Deity, but in ours. We may pay homage to "Almighty God" in the preamble to our constitution - echoing the US Declaration of Independence - but so far as I can recall, Almighty God has never been on a ballot, has never been an accounting officer in the Government of Kenya, nor has He ever deigned it necessary to have a face-to-heart-to-heart with the peoples of Kenya. How smart people acknowledged an imaginary friend in the constitution defies logic.
It is this cop out, that events are beyond our control, that events are in the hands of an unknowable all-powerful supreme being, that we are at the mercy of "fate", that leads the men and women we elect and appoint to govern our nation to lead hypocritical prayer breakfasts or rallies to solve very human problems, and to rely on hope and faith to straighten out our public finances. When these fail, they lie and distort the truth to hide the true state of affairs from us. And when that fails, they accuse us of being saboteurs and seditionists out to foment trouble for the rest of the country, slandering the country in the foreign press, being in the pay of foreign powers, and refusing to believe in the power of our absolute exceptionalism. I other words they want us to follow them into their land of fantasy, ignore the facts that stare us in the face, and hope for the best. I don't know which is more tragic: that they will not admit to being lost or that they think we haven't noticed.
This is the Information Age in which the digital tools at our fingertips - literally at our fingertips - have proven to be truly inconvenient for the men and women who govern us. Errors are committed every now and then, but by and large we are better informed than we were a decade ago. The age of the Official Secrets Act is coming to a close and there is little they can hide from us; because of the inherent iniquities and inequities of their arrangements, someone in their inner or outer circles is always going to be disgruntled and malcontented and that which they try to hide will be revealed by the disgruntled and malcontented. The digital media will guarantee that these revelations will travel far and wide.
The digital tools at our disposal today are the equivalent of the sunlight banishing the shadows of secrecy. They can try and tell us - lie to us - that the revelations about the expenses at the Ministry of Devolution and Planning were accidental; they shouldn't expect us to believe them. This is not the United States and we are not the instinctively anti-information Ben Carson, Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. One day soon our rage will overcome our fear and then they will truly fear us.
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