Internalize

I have done internships as a part of the educational requirements for both of my professions and degrees. At one, I had a bed in the corner of the rec room in my uncle and aunt's house -- which was great, because that internship paid squat. In another, I rented a "studio" that had started life as parts of several rooms in a bungalow and had a heating system that excited no atoms or molecules into heat-energy producing motion ever.

Interning is about gaining job experience in a situation where you can fly or fall with people around you who will guide you about the falling. Political internships involve even less actual work within the field, although statements made by legislators and politicians frequently share similarities with the work of untrained 19-year-olds. They are dodgy, incomplete, marginally accurate and largely defensive about the inadequacy of the work itself.

Earlier today I read a news item that some 40 White House interns wrote a letter -- unsigned, natch -- taking the President of the United States to task for not demanding Israel stop trying to kill Hamas terrorists. Now, they didn't phrase it that way, but that's because they're young and don't know very much.

I got into a nice late middle-aged rage about the gall of young people who know so many things and who have yet to let time and experience help them unlearn them so they can know stuff that's real and true.

I wondered about the proper response to the interns, but turns out Noah Rothman at National Review has the right idea: Fire the lot of them. Yes, the letter is anonymous, so some interns who held back might be let go and it's not particularly fair they get sent packing along with their willfully blind co-workers. But it's just an internship, they're very young and have the time to get over this, and maybe it can show the folly of knowing your co-workers are about to do something stupid and not standing up to call them out on it.

One of the funniest things about these silly people is that they are writing this letter as "the fall 2023" interns. Meaning their service is about up anyway. So rather than speaking truth to power, they are more like leaving power a note to find after the custodian cleans out their desks.

Every now and again society shows us how dumb an idea it is to listen to people without experience. They may be the brightest human beings in many a moon, but without experience they, as former President Reagan said, "know so many things that aren't so."