Last month, Paul Krugman wrote a New York Times rant entitled "What I hate about political coverage." In it, he castigated political journalists' attention to form rather than content. He noted, for example, that in lieu of detailed descriptions of Bush and Kerry's respective health care plans in 2004, most "analysis" was restricted to "how the plans were playing" in polls. Not surprisingly, most Americans ended up not knowing what the plans proposed. Krugman also pointed to the uncritical reception given Gen. Petraeus last month by the mainstream press, which trumpeted rather than challenged his claims and repeatedly informed the public of the public's awe and confidence in him, despite polling data to the contrary.

The press coverage of Petraeus' testimony was similar to that of Colin Powell's 2003 address to the United Nations. Many reporters simply accepted Powell's half-truths, innuendo, and lies as facts, without examination. Instead, they focused their attention on comparing Powell's presentation favorably to Adlai Stevenson's famous 1962 UN confrontation with the USSR--a comparison that they began promulgating before Powell had uttered a single word (see Michael Dobbs' February 5, 2003 Washington Post article).

Most coverage of the ongoing presidential race is no less insipid, focusing on fundraising and poll numbers rather than detailed descriptions of candidate platforms, policies, and track records. Debate is framed as non-debate. The question is not, "Is Iran a threat?" but rather, "How will you deal with the Iranian threat?" Not, "Is Social Security in crisis?" but rather, "What will you do about the Social Security crisis?" Meanwhile, we've accepted the silent substitution of the word "political" for the word "partisan," and we don't blink when legislative issues are reduced, not to their content, but to which party won. And our elections are presented to us as little more than pageants and telethons.

In this context, it almost makes sense to stomach the absurd: having exhausted, for now, the specter of mushroom clouds over American cities, Bush invoked the prospect of World War III in an October 17 press conference to goad us into attacking Iran. The reporters present didn't even ask a follow-up question. The unthinkable has become palatable, even blase. The hellhole we've made in Iraq is Iran's fault; Iran poses an imminent threat to world peace; a missile defense system that we know doesn't work will defend us against the threat that Iran doesn't pose. All of it ludicrous, but so what? Our media and politicians nonetheless parrot this nonsense to us. In so doing, we discover in them, and perhaps most importantly in ourselves, a horrifying, cynical complacency that allows lies to pass both unchallenged and unbelieved.

My goal, however, is not to condemn, yet again, the moral and critical abstention of the fourth estate and of our so-called leaders. I want instead to call attention to something more subtle: the pervasion and acceptance of this abstention, the ways in which it seems to increasingly characterize American society and discourse. While such a thesis requires more than a short article for its elaboration, let me at least give an example of what I mean.

I was recently at an invitation-only colloquium run by an American scientific agency and its European counterpart. Charged with defining an "international consensus" on a scientific policy issue, it was limited to about 30 people, two-thirds of whom were American. The remaining participants were from what Rumsfeld called "old Europe," plus one or two Canadians. Everyone was white and presumably middle class; a substantial majority was male. We wouldn't be wrong to ask ourselves what "international" means in this context. Nor would we be wrong to focus on why the conference took place in a romantic European capital when most participants were American; or why conference participants were given free airfare, a $189.00 per diem, lodging at 215 Euros a night, and a ~$2000 reception banquet, most (if not all) at the expense of European and American taxpayers. Nice perks, so long as you don't think about them.

Later, after submitting an expense report to the American agency, I was faxed a reimbursement contract for $700 more than I requested (or spent). I refused to sign it and ended up on the phone with an agency administrator. "You're entitled to these funds!" she said in disbelief. What a wonderful choice of words: entitled. You, by definition, deserve what you get.

Beyond entitlement and the associated slick of corruption lay a more refined and subtle problem. You could sense it from the scientist who presented himself as an authority at the conference without seemingly knowing much about his purported subject--a circumstance easily discernible from misrepresented facts and papers. Or perhaps you would suspect it from the degree to which confrontation was avoided and criticism discouraged, or from the explicit statements of some presenters that, in their review of the literature, they limited themselves to summarizing published claims rather than evaluating the merit of those claims. Another clue: a significant number of scientists were apparently content to attend the meeting without saying anything at all. The lynchpin came when I submitted my contribution to the subsequent report: in being revised by others, every single critical comment that I made about the previous report, including correction of factual errors, was removed.

Of course, I protested and so far have prevailed. But what remains striking to me about this experience is the very limited conception of intellectual freedom and intellectual responsibility that prevailed among many (not all) at the conference. This is where I see the disturbing parallel to the conduct of politicians and reporters, as well as more generally. A social environment is developing and becoming commonplace, in the academic world no less than the political, in which criticism and confrontation are avoided, in which deference to authority suffices, and in which perks reward complacency if not passivity.

Narrow views of responsibility are being adopted and accepted: it is not the responsibility of the scholar, the reporter, or the politician to criticize the structures in which she finds herself--the White House Correspondents' Dinner, for example, or an "international" colloquium--nor is it her responsibility to criticize the very claims that she reports. The scientist or educator, like the reporter and the politician, can sign his name to a document without seriously evaluating whether or not he agrees with it. It is even in his interest to do so. And inasmuch as the authority of these men and women has been presented to others as a reason for them to be believed, it has come to represent the extent of their own belief in themselves.

This spectacle, however hollow and pathetic, is not harmless. To restrict our sense of responsibility--including our willingness to criticize and confront, to argue and explain--is simultaneously to restrict our thought and our freedom. Authoritarianism is first and foremost not a style of government, but a way of thinking.