The inclusion of previously excluded voices helps, rather than impedes, our public deliberation. But it is precisely because of the great accomplishments of our democracy that we should be vigilant about its specific, unique vulnerability: its susceptibility, in stressful times, to the appeal of a shameless demagogue.
If late-stage political democracy has taken two centuries to ripen, the media equivalent took around two decades, swiftly erasing almost any elite moderation or control of our democratic discourse. The process had its origins in partisan talk radio at the end of the past century. All the old barriers to entry — the cost of print and paper and distribution — crumbled. So much of this was welcome. I relished it myself in the early aughts, starting a blog and soon reaching as many readers, if not more, as some small magazines do.
Fusty old-media institutions, grown fat and lazy, deserved a drubbing. The early independent blogosphere corrected facts, exposed bias, earned scoops. And as the medium matured, and as Facebook and Twitter took hold, everyone became a kind of blogger. In ways no 20th-century journalist would have believed, we all now have our own virtual newspapers on our Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter timelines — picking stories from countless sources and creating a peer-to-peer media almost completely free of editing or interference by elites.
This was bound to make politics more fluid. Political organizing — calling a meeting, fomenting a rally to advance a cause — used to be extremely laborious. Now you could bring together a virtual mass movement with a single webpage. It would take you a few seconds. The web was also uniquely capable of absorbing other forms of media, conflating genres and categories in ways never seen before. In the end, all these categories were reduced to one thing: traffic, measured far more accurately than any other medium had ever done before.
And what mainly fuels this is precisely what the Founders feared about democratic culture: feeling, emotion, and narcissism, rather than reason, empiricism, and public-spiritedness. Online debates become personal, emotional, and irresolvable almost as soon as they begin. Yes, occasional rational points still fly back and forth, but there are dramatically fewer elite arbiters to establish which of those points is actually true or valid or relevant.
We have lost authoritative sources for even a common set of facts. And without such common empirical ground, the emotional component of politics becomes inflamed and reason retreats even further. The more emotive the candidate, the more supporters he or she will get.
Politically, we lucked out at first. But he was also, paradoxically, a very elite figure, a former state and U. So he has masked, temporarily, the real risks in the system that his pioneering campaign revealed. Those who saw in his campaign the seeds of revolutionary change, who were drawn to him by their own messianic delusions, came to be bitterly disappointed by his governing moderation and pragmatism.
The climate Obama thrived in, however, was also ripe for far less restrained opportunists. In , Sarah Palin emerged as proof that an ardent Republican, branded as an outsider, tailor-made for reality TV, proud of her own ignorance about the world, and reaching an audience directly through online media, could also triumph in this new era.
She was, it turned out, a John the Baptist for the true messiah of conservative populism, waiting patiently and strategically for his time to come. Trump, we now know, had been considering running for president for decades. Trump was as underrated for all of as Obama was in — and for the same reasons. He intuitively grasped the vanishing authority of American political and media elites, and he had long fashioned a public persona perfectly attuned to blast past them.
Despite his immense wealth and inherited privilege, Trump had always cultivated a common touch. He did not hide his wealth in the lateth century — he flaunted it in a way that connected with the masses. His was a cult of democratic aspiration. He was a macho media superstar.
Palin had told her husband she was going to Costco but had sneaked into J. Penney in Anchorage to see … one Ivana Trump, who, in the wake of her divorce, was touting her branded perfume.
Trump assiduously cultivated this image and took to reality television as a natural. In retrospect, it is clear he was training — both himself and his viewers. If you want to understand why a figure so widely disliked nonetheless powers toward the election as if he were approaching a reality-TV-show finale, look no further. His television tactics, as applied to presidential debates, wiped out rivals used to a different game. In such a shame-free media environment, the assholes often win.
He was thinking of the upheavals in Europe in the first half of the century, but the book remains sobering, especially now. Not despair, or revolt, or resignation — but frustration simmering with rage.
Mass movements, he notes as did Tocqueville centuries before him , rarely arise when oppression or misery is at its worst say, ; they tend to appear when the worst is behind us but the future seems not so much better say, It is when a recovery finally gathers speed and some improvement is tangible but not yet widespread that the anger begins to rise. After the suffering of recession or unemployment, and despite hard work with stagnant or dwindling pay, the future stretches ahead with relief just out of reach.
When those who helped create the last recession face no consequences but renewed fabulous wealth, the anger reaches a crescendo. The jobs available to the working class no longer contain the kind of craftsmanship or satisfaction or meaning that can take the sting out of their low and stagnant wages.
The once-familiar avenues for socialization — the church, the union hall, the VFW — have become less vibrant and social isolation more common. Global economic forces have pummeled blue-collar workers more relentlessly than almost any other segment of society, forcing them to compete against hundreds of millions of equally skilled workers throughout the planet.
No one asked them in the s if this was the future they wanted. And the impact has been more brutal than many economists predicted. A rising China, a revisionist Russia, and global threats like climate change require American leadership and multilateral engagement.
Those countries could respond by accelerating their planning for a world without reliable US leadership. Chinese leaders could react by feeling vindicated in their assessment that the United States is in terminal decline, increasing the risk that they miscalculate or make rash decisions. Mathew J. Follow him on Twitter matburrows. Inflection Points Nov 15, By Frederick Kempe.
New Atlanticist Nov 11, By Damon Wilson. New Atlanticist Nov 9, If this pattern continues—with one party aiming to confront the challenges at top of mind for a majority of Americans, and the other continuing to stoke the hostility and indignation held by a significant minority—it will be a recipe not only for more gridlock and ineffective governance, but also for economic harm to nearly all people and places. Editor's Note: This post was updated on February 26, with new data.
The Avenue Cities are pledging to confront climate change, but are their actions working? David G. Victor and Mark Muro. The issue would have to be, we believe we can win, and we have to win. Of course, in there were plenty of Republicans - a majority of primary voters, in fact - who didn't support Trump's march to the party's nomination. Trump won with a plurality, and he could do so again. This time around, he will have even greater advantages - including an established fundraising network, a more experienced campaign team and a party hierarchy at the state and national level that, unlike , is now filled with Trump loyalists.
The Biden presidency is only nine months old. It's still more than three years until the next presidential election. But in the US, a successful presidential campaign is a multi-year, near-billion-dollar undertaking - and the road to the White House runs through Iowa. How 'Let's go Brandon' became an anti-Biden jeer. Image source, Getty Images. The year-old senator said it would be stupid for him to not seek Mr Trump's help. Trump gear being sold outside the Iowa rally. Inside the rally, the answer was an unequivocal yes.
Shenoah Hanson can't wait for Mr Trump to formally throw his hat in the ring. Republicans might only be able to defeat Mr Trump by attacking him from the right, says Bob Vander Plaats.
0コメント