What this country needs is fewer people who know what this country needs. We'd be better off, in my opinion, without so many opinions. Especially without so many political opinions. Including my own.
Our nation faces a multitude of puzzling, complex and abstruse problems. Most Americans aren't sure what to do about them. But we lack politicians with the courage to say, "I'm not sure what to do about them either." We even lack politicians with the courage to say, "I'm not sure what 'abstruse' means."
Our economy has been upended by technological changes that make the Industrial Revolution look like James Watt putting a bigger teakettle on a hotter stove.
Our second Gilded Age, with its golden pathways across the ether, is a gold brick when it comes to crumbling roads, decaying bridges, rackety public transit, corroding water pipes and collapsing sewers.
A soaring economy has left absurd deprivation in the midst of ridiculous luxury. A click on a website can now deliver everything to everybody — except a living wage.
Meanwhile, we're undergoing social changes so swift and profound that they'd send even the best cultural anthropologist fleeing. A latter-day Margaret Mead would flee to Samoa hoping to study something as relatively uncomplicated as teenagers.
Yet our political leaders all think they know the answer to "What is to be done?," to quote Vladimir Lenin, a political leader who — among his other faults — flunked his own quiz.
The problem with opinions is that they're not synonymous with accomplishing anything. I have three school-age children who have strong opinions about climate change but can't remember to close the front door even in midwinter. The traditional dad line, "We're not trying to heat the outdoors," never worked, so now I appeal to their wokeness: "Hey, what are you, climate deniers?"
