Are We Attributing to MAGA Far More “Thinking” than Is Properly Warranted?

I remember a sixth-grade science class in which our teacher, Mr. Tokeida, brought in a number of meal worms and a large petri dish.  He told the class, “I’m going to take a few meal worms, one at a time, and put them in the center of the petri dish.  I want you to watch what happens.”  Each one moved in a straight line until it encountered the edge of the petri dish, then followed the rim in a circle, never veering away back towards the center.

“Why do you think they all did this exact thing?” he asked us.

One of us said, “Because they think they can get out.”

Mr. Tokeida smiled and asked my classmate in response, “So you’re attributing a meal worm with the ability to think?”

I was stunned; I hadn’t seen this coming.  Here was an introduction to philosophy that hit me like a ton of bricks.  There must be some mechanism that drove the meal worms to follow the rim, but it couldn’t properly be called “thinking,” could it?

There is an analogy to a recent monologue that Bill Maher did, aimed at Trump supporters, asking them to consider what “America” actually means in terms of rule of law, due process, no-one above the law, and the U.S. Constitution. He concluded: “What good is Making America Great Again if you wind up losing the ‘America’ part?”

When I heard this, I traveled back to sixth grade, and I asked myself: are we over-attributing the capacity to think to these people?