America's "satisfaction sinks," says Gallup. Humbug, says I.

Having discovered, last month, that Americans' satisfaction with the country's direction has been hammered from 41% to a near flatlining 11% in only one year, this month Gallup provides the particulars, as it were, underlying our yawning surliness. Behold the "public satisfaction" ratings for "some aspects of life in America today":

We begin passably, with two-thirds of Americans being content with the — their? — quality of life, and an approximation of such when it comes to Horatio Alger. After that we proceed to bat less than .500, hitting the cellar upon pondering "the moral and ethical climate," whatever the hell that means.

But perhaps we should not begin at that beginning. Gallup proposes to gauge "public opinion." Recently I read the sociologist Robert Nisbet's masterwork of conservative grump, Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary, albeit a bit late. It was published nearly 40 years ago. At any rate, in one section Nisbet demarcates the public from people; the public, he says, is a "community" of a conscious as well as unconscious consensus, undergirded by traditions, myths, and rituals (all of which he is quite big on). Yet polls unveil popular — not public — opinion, the former being "by nature shallow of root" — "in constant flux, appearing and disappearing like the froth on an ocean wave."

Nisbet's is far more than a mere terminological matter; his is the fundamental distinction between, say, cherishing America as a land of liberty (if we even stop to think about it) and deciding whom we might vote for in 2024, or what brand of candy bar we'll buy tomorrow. On this point, Nisbet seems invulnerable.

Thus we see in Gallup's polling not public opinion, but that of the popular variety "in constant flux." The distinction explains how our cumulative satisfaction with the country's direction could, in the span of only 12 months, dive from 41% to 11% — if, in fact, it has.

In addition, just what does satisfaction mean? Is some segment of society cranked that we didn't go full fascist in the November and then January Revolutions? Are equal numbers simply dissatisfied that Bernie is back where he belongs? Or perhaps whole armies of respondents gravely dislike the television season's new lineup, if that sort of thing still occurs.

Who knows? Moreover, most of the queried categories of satisfaction — the scrupulous "drilling down," as they say — are but swaths of the infinitely undecipherable. About half say they're content with "the influence of organized religion." What in heaven's name does that actually denote? Could be it be that most are content with the decline in organized religion's influence? Could be. Roughly a third express satisfaction with "the size and power of the federal government"; take your pick, its size and power are comfortably huge or properly small.

And, again, as for America's "moral and ethical climate," 18% are either OK with the unquantifiably ethereal or they're positively giddy that we're bicycling on the path to bacchanalian perdition.

Should you think I am unsentimentally cavalier about our moral climate, you're right — largely because I haven't a clue as to what a satisfactory moral climate is, or, for that matter, what genuine morality is. That I shall leave to Thomas Aquinas and Allen Ginsberg.

But, take heart. Underneath these sundry layers of popular opinion in eternal flux lies the constance of the American public, which always seems to regroup in its adherence to the worthily cherished.

Comments

[Peter G]

And so it goes. Aquinas and Ginsberg seem like reasonable bookends for moral range. That’s merely a personal opinion mind. As long we don’t regress to weather modification through human sacrifice I am satisfied. I am a pragmatist and if that worked then sure. But evidence says no.

[Peter G]

Apparently from what I am reading Biden has decided to suspend the usual courtesy intelligence briefings to Trump as an ex-president. This is a lost opportunity I fear. They didn’t have to be the real intelligence briefing. They could have been an intelligence briefing.

[Halster]

It would have been a good opportunity to feed him fake intelligence to see where it surfaced later.

[Peter G]

My thought exactly.

[Halster]

Your mention of Allen Ginsberg triggered a long dormant memory. In 1968 I was a senior in high school playing guitar in a blues band with a bunch of college guys. We played an anti-war event at the local state university with a pre-famous Carlos Santana and his Santana Blues Band. The headliner was Allen Ginsberg. I met them both and it was one of the most interesting backstage experiences I've ever had. That day I was literally an awestruck little fly on the wall listening to everything Ginsberg said.