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From MIT Inventor To Tea Party Leader
An anonymous reader writes "In the midst of Congressional races around the country, one stands out to techies. Thomas Massie, an MIT whiz kid who pioneered touch-based interfaces and founded SensAble Technologies in the 1990s, is the favorite to win the Republican nomination in his Kentucky district next week. SensAble was recently sold on the cheap, but in a new exclusive, Massie explains why he left the haptics firm years ago to lead a simpler life of farming, family, and guns — lots of guns. Along the way he built a solar-powered, off-the-grid house and became a local hero of the Tea Party. Now Massie is leading the charge to get more engineers into politics, and if he wins, he could be a force to be reckoned with in Washington, DC."
Look, I went to MIT, and I can tell you that (a) the people there are remarkably bright and (b) I wouldn't particularly want to put my trust in the political or economic opinions of some randomly chosen person from there, right wing, left wing, or requiring more dimensions than string theory to characterize politically.
Really smart people often have amazingly insightful opinions, but there's nothing like a brilliant person to have unshakable confidence in an unassailably stupid idea, like Schockley (the inventor of the transistor) and his theories of white racial supremacy. Or like my friend who had an affair with a married man because he promised her that his wife would be cool with it. It was impossible to convince her of the obvious fact this was stupid, bat-shit crazy idea because as smart as I was, she was way, way smarter. Having an argument with her was like climbing into the ring with Ali in his prime for a few bare knuckle rounds. You couldn't lay a glove on her. That taught me that sometimes a friend's role is to wait and be there when life gives your friend an unavoidable hard lesson.
Really brilliant people are used to being right when everyone else around them is wrong. They're hard to argue out of a wrong position, and when you get enough of them together that they can sort themselves into loony birds of a feather even reality can't make a dent in their opinions. And brilliance in one area doesn't translate into competence in every area. There are people I'd trust to design an aircraft I had to fly in or a sub I had to dive in, but that I wouldn't trust managing by checking account.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ever see those Tea Party rallies?
Yep, attended one a while ago, actually.
I think the only value that all of them have in common is lower taxes and smaller government. After that, all bets off. The ultra-religious Christian Taliban loony toonies get all the press -
And that says far more about the press, than about the Tea Party movement.
the ones that kind of hijacked the Tea Party and turned it from a strictly fiscal conservative movement into one that also has the social conservatives;
A key point of the movement is for different groups normally associated with conservative politics to put aside their differences and focus on something they agree on. For instance, at the rally I attended, there were folks who agreed and who disagreed with current US foreign policy when I spoke to them.
which I get the impression that the social conservatives now pretty much run the show
They'd certainly like to, but there was very little in the way of social-related anything at the rally I went to. No mention of abortion at all. The pro gay marriage GOProud folks were handing out flyers and such, without a single unkind word towards any of them, but other than that, nothing related to sex during the speeches or on the signs. Perhaps I missed something. What should I have been keeping a look out for?
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
"Crazy" has no intellectual boundaries
The interesting thing is, there is another group of extremists who are known for the prominence of engineers in their midst. Osama Bin Laden was himself an engineer, and he's not the only one. It's not a science thing, you don't see many botanists or physicists running amuk, just engineers. It may be an engineering mindset thing.
It seems to me that as a group engineers may not be the best possible choice for political discourse. Bring on the botanists and psychologists and chemists and entomologists (and etymologists too, what the hell), but let's not overdo the representation from engineers.
This is a little mini-speech I like to give to people, and it's rather appropriate for the this:
In the US, politicians train and study as politicians. They have degrees in political science, or law, or economics, or maybe history or business. Obama was a lawyer. So was Clinton. Bush II had an MBA. Bush I studied economics, as did Reagan. You have to go back all the way to Carter to find a president that had any sort of remotely "practical" training, as a naval officer specializing in nuclear submarines.
In China, politicians train and study as engineers. If shit goes down (as it is wont to do) and the revolution comes, President Hu Jintao could flee to the US, change his name, and live out his life working as an engineer (hydraulic engineering - his first real job was at a hydroelectric plant). Vice President Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering. Premier Wen Jiabao studied geomechanics. Wu Bangguo studied electrical engineering.
Engineering, fundamentally, is "the study of solving problems". It's not, strictly speaking, a science, but an application of science to the real world.
Modern American politics seems to be less about "solving people's problems" and more "making new problems to 'solve' so you can stay in power".
In case you haven't noticed, China is beating us. They're obviously doing something right, and I don't think it's the censorship or the market controls. Their system of government may not be better than ours on paper - slow, central control of everything rarely works for long - but they're better in practice because they have people who actually do the job they're supposed to do.
NOW is our chance. The Chinese seem to be making exactly the mistake we made - their up-and-coming leaders are career politicians, born-and-raised to rule. At the same time, their population boom will be shifting from a worker-heavy populace to a retiree-heavy populace, causing exactly the economic problems we're having now with all the Baby Boomers retiring.
We get one chance to get back on top. We need a government that responds to us, one that works quickly and efficiently for the benefit of everyone.
If anybody knows of any good candidates, speak up. I do not want a lawyer to represent me. I do not want a manager to represent me. I want an engineer, a man (or woman) who solves problems, because we have a lot of problems that need solving.