Quote of the month
October 21st, 2008
This is what politics is to me. Someone tells you all the trees on your street have a disease. One side says give them food and water and everything will be fine. One side says chop them down and burn them so they don’t infect another street. That’s politics. And I’m going, Who says they’re diseased? And how does this sickness manifest itself? And is this outside of a natural cycle? And who said this again? And when were they on this street? But we just have people who shout, “Chop it down and burn it” or “Give it food and water” and there’s your two choices. Sorry, I’m not a believer.
- John Malkovich, Esquire Magazine, Nov 2008
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We had a rock group in Bulgaria called “Panican Whyasker”. Well, I am not panican but I really love the word “whyasker”. I don’t know if such a word exists in the English language but I definitely call myself a whyasker. And I believe that if we want to name ourselves humans we have to be whyaskers.
I am happy to learn that John Malkovich is a whyasker, too. Thanks, Scott!
Dead on. Count on John Malkovich to have a unique and thought-provoking opinion. It looks like John subscribes to systems thinking, in that he sees everything as interconnected and part of something bigger. Things are never simply black or white and we should stop accepting this idea as a truth. And stop allowing and encouraging this point of view to be presented as valid, especially in decisions that affect the great whole.
I wonder, does Malkovich ask for the research data and read it? Does he seek out alternative expert opinions? Does he ask questions of botanists? Does he try to find out what the basic opinion of arborists are?
I hear this argument all the time. People use it as an excuse to disengage from politics and make their disengagement the fault of politicians.
If Mr. Malkovich — or anyone else — is interested in the foundations behind political positions, there are books and books and books full of political theory, economic theory, civil engineering theory. There are stacks of data, all publicly available. There are subject matter experts who write about this stuff.
What Malkovich wants is someone to spoon-feed him the answers. But no one can spoon-feed him the answers, because he will just say: “Is this person spoon-feeding me the right stuff? Oh, however will I know?”
Thud: I agree with you.
My take on the quote is this: I agree with his sentiment about how people often behave and I like the way he captures the dysfunction.
But I do not agree with the notion of abandoning participation simply because the observation is true.
The choice Malkovich doesn’t mention is to stand up and make a better analysis. To keep asking those questions until you find a group of people also interested in actual thinking and discourse as they are out there if you look for them.
For those who will listen (which in Malkovich’s case, is way people than the average person will have listening to them).
There is never an excuse for not doing *anything* - I really believe that.