Djelloul Marbrook

I’m worried about the consequences of our clickable society. If everything is just a click away we might get to thinking everyone is a click away. We might all stay home and play poker. Isn’t that what our defense secretary did? He stayed home and clicked on war. Then he clicked on Iraq. Then he complained the press dealt him a bad hand.

I’ve identified some click and double-click ideas. Like trickle-down economics. You know, make the rich richer and hope for the best. Click on rich, then click on money, and then watch it flow to the untaxable Cayman Islands.

Then there’s touch-screen voting, which, thankfully, the State of New York is resisting. New York is nothing if not savvy. Touch the screen and watch the Democrats circle the drain while the exit polls show them winning.

I think the clickable society and simplemindedness go hand in glove together. Find an enemy, click on him, send poor kids to fight him, and watch everybody die. If it sounds all too familiar, it’s because Adolph Hitler tried it.

The clickable society’s dirty little secret—life would be boring without dirty little secrets, wouldn’t it?—is that the more you click the deeper in doo you get, because everything that confronts you onscreen is totally unreliable, which is how we like our politics. One click deserves another until you are hopelessly misinformed, deluded and addicted to quick fixes.

The more addicted to quick fixes we become the more boobs we elect. I think computers, as much as I love them, as much as we all love them, have conclusively proven that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and all the little bits together encourage us to place our lives in the hands of idiots.

If you want to know just how clickable our society is just type clickable into Google and here’s what you get: Results 1 - 10 of about 34,300,000 for clickable. There’s a clickable mummy. You click on his sarcophagus and find out what each body part looked like. I didn’t go too deeply into that one. I even found a clickable croc, without the k. It reminded me that I myself am a clickable crock. Maybe even a doubly clickable crock. I don’t respond well to control clicks. There are clickable maps, clickable mathematics, and more than enough shaky information to guarantee you membership in the booboisie.

But the first time I saw friends using Cliff Notes I realized that society is pretty much divvied up between those who want to know dangerously little and those of us who keep discovering how ignorant we are. I’m pretty sure I’m going to die ignorant, but I still aspire to die an adult. I think the first group is chronically elected to high office by its peers. The latter group has its hands full trying to stay sane.

—DM