A FB reader responds to the possibility of having a drug factory in our homes:
It’s going to be a brave, new world in not many years, for this and other reasons. Unfortunately, the USA and I imagine most other countries do not select their leaders, politicians and legislators for their intelligence, education, creativity or ability to lead. Especially in this country, the “elite” educated people are frowned upon to the point where that very term is a disparagement and symbol for bad things. When it comes to managing things like yeast-based opiate synthesis, it’s going to take a lot of intelligence and creativity and leadership to keep it from becoming a magnified scourge. Legislators ought to be reading SF, things like William Gibson and far wider, just to get some wild ideas about just how future things might pan out, as well as including the scientists and scholars. But that won’t happen. We will still elect the guy who sends selfies of his penis to women he is not married to.
While I’ll grant that sometimes our legislators are less than we might find desirable, and that the right wing is particularly deplorable over the last 20 years, it’s not necessarily up to leaders of a nation of ours to come up with creative solutions to new problems – but to gather up the thoughts of smart people, winnow out those that won’t work, and implement those that will. That’s why then-candidate Jesse Ventura could get away with saying, “I don’t know”, because he’d follow it up with, “But I’ll hire the smartest person I can find to answer that problem.”
Have you ever (rhetorical q) tried to imagine being a legislator yourself? Of having to cast votes on policy concerning Ag, Finance, Legal System, investigate judicial nominees, Defense, Surveillance domestic and foreign … AND represent your district? Well, you do it with the help of your staff. Same staff should also be doing research on these hard questions and coming up with proposed solutions, the names of experts who can testify …. so, to some extent, if former Rep. Weiner is competent at taking that sort of approach to new problems, then I don’t really care if he amuses himself with selfies of his penis.
Of course, arguing that such behavior indicates a fundamental immaturity inappropriate to a leader would be appealing to me. Then I’d remember just how much Winston Churchill drank. The pecadilloes of leaders, effective or not, are legion, and sometimes I wonder if they’re a necessity, a relief valve, rather than a contemptible habit.
