Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

Mister Rogers destroyed America.

Game theorists can show you how a population of appeasers and compromisers will have their asses handed to them time after time by predators on civility. When predators enter Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, "let's all get along" will mean shaving standard after standard until you're at the point where the predator has what s/he wanted all along and gets to decide whether s/he'll keep any of the tolerant, nurturing, communal types around. (As pets, as Grover Norquist famously quipped.) If there's any good news, it's that, once there are only predators, one wins until the poison (or the stress of worrying about it) gets him, or they consume themselves, or they have to become more appeasing and compromising. At that latter point, which does happen here and there in civilization, those who can cooperate are more productive and prosper better. Until the population gets back to the original point, where the predators can destroy the Mister Rogers of the world again for their short-term gain.

The problem for Mister Rogers and his clueless cousins on Sesame Street is obviously during the times when the cooperation and understanding they extol have produced so much that predators don't have to worry about, if they even recognize, the long-term implications of their predation. They feed off civility, taking and taking, and the best ones, the most destructive ones, are the ones who can do it in the guise of Mister Rogers. "But he's so nice, he's really authentic, you can trust him, he seems like someone you'd like to have a beer with, he couldn't be doing that . . . ." Or they depend on the Mister Rogers around them to buy them legitimacy, to see through rose-colored glasses, to say, "Yeah, this is bad, but let's not be judgmental, that's evil, let's work together and all get along." (This is best read aloud in a kind of sing-song pattern.) "Nice" has covered so much evil in human history, on small and large scales, either as disguise for predators or drug for their prey. One of the hardest lessons in life is discovering how "nice" isn't really nice, it's actually the source of a lot of evil.

We're clearly in a predator-dominant period in this country, the Mister Rogers in our leadership, newsrooms, morning news shows, lacking the brains or guts to stand up effectively to the transgressors (not talking about federal prosecutors here, the last bastion of realists and our last hope). Game theorists will also tell you that the best long-term viable answer to predation is "tit for tat," hitting the predator back with the same until s/he realizes it's more constructive to live in the Neighborhood. This is a point Mister Rogers was incapable of expressing in his years on TV and led to too many good little acolytes rejecting it or not even understanding its possibility. He symbolized, institutionalized, and legitimized a generation's worth of smooshy liberal ethos that has given away the store to today's predators stealing this nation's Constitution, future, and legacy. As noted, if the conditions are right, his type can thrive, but they don't exist right now. And being nice and tolerant and "respecting" the predators' viewpoints and positions instead of villifying them for what they are and refusing to accept their BS anymore has gotten us where we are today.

It wasn't George Bush and his Gang of Predators. Not the Enrons or Exxons with their abuses and destruction of our economy and environment. Why shouldn't they run all over a populace of pathetic wusses? Blaming them is like blaming coyotes for eaten sheep. The blame lies with the "nice" people, the tolerant people, who allow it to happen, who don't confront and condemn, who didn't demonstrate when the Supreme Court stole an election, who laugh at "where are the missing WMDs" but get mad at "why are we in Iraq?" When the day comes when American history has peaked or, worse, turned its promise into its antithesis, historians (from somewhere else) may name names and point fingers. But it's a good bet they won't name Fred Rogers.

He's where they should start.