Editor’s Notebook: The nation’s simple problem

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) gives a thumbs down during President Joe Biden's State of the Union address during a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee | Getty Images)

If you accosted me on a street corner and asked me to name, off the top of my head, five current members of the U.S. House of Representatives, I have a pretty good idea what my answer would be: Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas – New Hampshire’s reps for our two districts – followed by Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz.

The first two names make all the sense in the world for someone from here. But why would representatives from Georgia’s 14th, Colorado’s 3rd, and Florida’s 1st, respectively, also make the list? I’m a sucker for skilled orators, but these three will never be part of a public speaking curriculum. I’m drawn to people who are thoughtful about policy, even when I reflexively disagree with them, but this is not exactly a “thoughtful” gang. But what they do have going for them is they are loud and uncomplicated. Whether you’re on the right or left, there is absolutely no confusion about where Greene, Boebert, and Gaetz fit into the story. So every time a politician, journalist, or pundit needs to “set the edge” for whatever political event has taken place, they just follow the noise to the belligerent fringe.

And that’s why I know those three so well – and why you probably know them well, too.

Leaving outright lying and deliberate misrepresentation of facts aside for the moment, oversimplification is America’s favorite political pastime, and its most vocal modern purveyors are also its most recognizable political celebrities. How do you fix illegal immigration? Arrest everybody. How do you eliminate poverty? Make them work harder. How do you end systemic racism? Trick question – there is no systemic racism. Our new political reality is that there is no domestic problem that can’t be addressed – or dismissed – by a simple clause, slogan, or catch phrase. But the oversimplification works only if there’s a bad guy you can saddle with all of the complexities that you don’t want to deal with. And then when the bad guy starts citing root causes and evidence, you just call it wokeness, elitism, or word salad and go back to the catch phrase. See, it’s all pretty simple.

It’s a predicament without an easy exit, because as Albert Camus said in “The Myth of Sisyphus,” “the worm is in man’s heart.”

Sisyphus, you might remember, was condemned by the gods to an eternal fate of rolling a giant boulder up a hill only to start all over again each time it inevitably rolled back down. I don’t know that there’s a better metaphor for the human condition. We all have our boulders, albeit of different shapes and sizes, and how we view our fate determines the way we live. Maybe this makes me guilty of oversimplification myself, but I think that broadly speaking people fall into one of three groups: 1) Those who resent the fact that they have to roll the stupid boulder up the hill over and over again, and are consumed by thoughts of who is to blame for their fate. 2) Those who, even as they struggle with the weight of their boulder, consciously “practice gratitude” by thinking about how much worse other people have it with their heavier, more jagged boulders. 3) Those who accept, despite some occasional inner resistance, that their boulder must be rolled, and so they roll it.

That first category is poison – it’s the mechanism by which a politician practiced in the art of oversimplification can turn disparate, personal gripes into a unified movement. But the second one isn’t always so great, either. The habit of social comparison, even in service to gratitude, can make us feel like so much less than we should be, so much less than we already are. 

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” Camus said, and that seems to align with the third group. That’s the place we dream of, where we long to be. To imagine Sisyphus happy is to live fully in all circumstances, to be at home with each step on our hill because in truth there is no other place we can be. 

Bliss is our natural state – made apparent by the universal love of weekends, holidays, and vacations, and of love itself – and we spend our entire lives desperately trying to get there and stay there. And so when we can’t find our way to that state consistently or ever, and we’re told that somebody or something is blocking us and we believe it, blame cuts through disillusionment the way a martini cuts through stress: effectively but temporarily.

That’s what the politics of oversimplification is selling. In the end, though, we’re always left with our boulder, in all its complexity. 

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