No, I am not talking about how people believe that vaccines cause autism, or that climate change is a hoax, or that creationism is science. Although these, too, reinforce the notion that we live in an Age of Unreason.
I am talking about the absurdities we take for granted in our daily lives, even though we supposedly live in the 21st Century.
I am talking about the fact that the Supreme Court actually ruled that corporations are people
that politicians are allowed to draw up their own districts
that the LGBT community is denied equal rights under the law
that our government spends more on military and defense than on educating and caring for our youth
that many people can purchase a firearm or alcohol far easier than they can find employment
that effective, affordable health care is not a universal right
that policies for medical treatments like abortion are not left to the actual medical experts that are trained to perform them
the same goes for curriculum and teachers
that there is a revolving door between regulators and regulated, lobbyists and lobbied to
or that the largest purchase many people ever make is a house they can't live in half of the time because they are working to pay for it.
Frankly, faced with the reality of what we as a society can achieve, and have achieved, the fact these are also part of our collective reality is absurd.
Whether by chance or by deliberate act, the Democratic Party has become the party that stands for Reason, Evidence-based policy, and forging real transformational societal advances. One need only look at how the Republican Party no longer stands for much more than extremism, tribalism, anti-intellectualism, and self-interest.
Better yet, one need only look at history. Who has always been on the wrong side of racism and intolerance, against women's rights, of workers' rights? The usual suspects. We are not fighting 21st century battles. We are fighting the same battles that have dogged us for hundreds of years, perhaps as long as there has been human civilization.
In this light, the Conservatives of today are far from extreme after all, in that they are exactly in line with their ideological predecessors of the last millennia. What justifications prop up their arguments against LGBT rights and women's rights and labor rights, other than the scriptures and edicts of eons past? What do they bring to the table to solve the ills that plague our modern society other than failed experiments like trickle down economics or deregulation or the dismantling of government services?
When it comes to addressing these absurdities, only the Democratic Party makes any effort at all. None of us here are completely satisfied with the Party as a whole, but taken as a whole, it stands for the future, while the GOP stands for the stone age.
The value in acknowledging that we currently live in an Age of Unreason is that, by and large, human civilization has always moved forward. Once an absurdity is recognized by the greater populace, it often becomes a relic of the past, perhaps slowly, always eventually. Sure, it may resurface every now and again, like geocentrism, but it never again enjoys a hallowed spot amongst civilization's reigning values.
Income inequality, unemployment, hunger, climate change, discrimination. Are these really problems we are unable to solve in this day and age?
If we ever hope to make great strides in the gravest problems our society faces in these times, first, we have to identify them for what they are:
In light of what we are able to accomplish, of our resources available to us, of our combined intelligence and ingenuity and ambition, and of our hopes and ambitions for our future generations,
They are absurd.