(HOST) Commentator David Moats is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who has been thinking about the word "pundit", and about the importance of what they do.
(MOATS) This election year we’ve been hearing a lot about black voters, white voters, old voters, young voters, male voters, female voters.
All of these categories make me feel queasy, and I think a lot of people feel that way, which is why you hear a lot of resentment expressed about experts and pundits. Especially pundits. Now I’m a pundit, so I decided to look the word up.
I’m a pundit, so I decided to look it up.
It turns out pundit is from "pandit," of Hindi and Sanskrit derivation, meaning someone learned in Hindu philosophy, law and religion.
Or a person of great learning – often used humorously.
The humorous part I get.
The wisdom not so much.
People feel uneasy about the wisdom of pundits in part because it makes people feel like specimens.
White voters do this, women do that.
But this analysis by group misses the essential point of democracy, which involves individual decisions.
Of course, we’re all affected by our connections to others – other men or women, or other young people, other African-Americans, other pundits.
But in our minds and hearts we make decisions as individuals.
Our whole system is based on that premise.
Even if we decide to take the advice of a friend from our own group, it’s our decision to do so.
It seems there has been a confusion of cause and effect.
The cause is the decision you or I make.
The effect is the pattern that a pundit sees after the fact.
These patterns can be fascinating. And they may even suggest something about future decisions, though this year pundit predictions have proven far from reliable.
Part of Barack Obama’s appeal is that he speaks to us as Americans, not as a sociological sample.
Hillary Clinton too, is asking us to throw aside old assumptions.
As for John McCain, he’s defied the arithmetic of categories, much to the dismay of arch-conservatives, who worry they may not have arithmetic on their side after all.
Sure, there is plenty of conflict between black and white, men and women.
Some of the woman-hating humor that circulates is appalling and embarrassing, and you know there is racism simmering in the cauldron.
But more and more we’re appalled by racism, sexism and other forms of hatred.
Our choices are more than the sum of our ethnic, racial or gender dentities, which is why voters this year have been crossing every boundary of identity or category.
We rebel at the idea that our actions are determined by some outside force.
The great thrill that many people feel this year is owing to the sense that old boundaries are breaking down and something new is happening and nobody knows yet what it is.
The pundits will come along after, me included, like the men with the brooms who follow after the elephants, which is not exactly the Sanskrit meaning of the world.
We’ll try to make sense of it, and clean it up, but we won’t know what it is until it happens.