Denmark Vesey: Heard Around The Pump

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Heard Around The Pump

This morning I saw a young brotha pumping gas into his Volvo at the pump next to me.

Hey my man, excuse me. Is your gas $4.15 a gallon too? I mean ... I just want to make sure my pump aint broken or something.

(Shaking his head side to side) Nah man. Mine is $4.15 too. That's what it costs these days.

Yeah man. I don't if it's that gas has gone up, or if it's more that the dollar has gone down.

It's the dollar. I was in Holland ten years ago, they had the Guilder. A dollar was like twice their currency. Today, it's less than a single Euro. But listen, if you are going to buy gas, buy it early in the morning when it is cooler. When it gets hot, the gas expands rapidly and you get less for your dollar. Also, pump it slowly. When you pump quickly you add air to the mix.

Ahhh. Thanks young brotha. I'll remember that.

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The founders of the American state understood that the proper functioning of a democracy required an educated electorate. It is this understanding that justifies a system of public education and that led slaveholders to resist the spread of literacy among their chattels. But the meaning of "educated" has changed beyond recognition in two hundred years. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer sufficient to decide on public policy. Now we need quantum mechanics and molecular biology. The knowledge required for political rationality, once available to the masses, is now in the possession of a specially educated elite, a situation that creates a series of tensions and contradictions in the operation of representative democracy.

Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. P

Lord Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science On Society (Routledge Press: New York, 1951).

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