Subtitled “The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy”
(Oxford, August 2021, xvii + 245pp, including 25pp notes and index)
Here’s the last of several books about current issues that I read in December and January. I read this one because I liked the author’s previous book, THE DEATH OF EXPERTISE (reviewed here). And this one has an unexpected counter-intuitive thesis: that the discontent in the modern world is derived from how successful we’ve been in creating it.
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As with previous reviews, my complete notes are below, following this summary set of bullets.
- Introduction. These are *not* the worst time ever; in many ways we’ve never had it so good. Then why all the complaints? We’re losing because we won. We’re suffering because we’re successful. We’re unhappy because we have what we want.
- Ch 1. Success results in a hunger for apocalypse, along three lines: peace, affluence, and technological progress. These have led to bad outcomes (because, I would say, of some of those biases of base human nature that were effective in the ancestral world but misfire in the modern) as people still *think* about endless wars and crime, forget how sordid the past was and evaluate their wealth only in comparison to their neighbors or what’s on TV, and withdraw into virtual worlds.
- Ch 2. Democracy requires civic responsibility. Author recounts a study of a small Italian village in which everyone was poor and mistrustful, in ways that recalled the Italian Mafia mentality. Now Americans have party identities but no stable ideological views. And Americans resent being told what to do, becoming materialistic and self-obsessed.
- Ch 3. As people give in to their base instincts, democracy becomes more difficult. Americans have become overgrown children, increasingly angry at things they don’t understand (bad at assessing risk) and polarized. Trump fans want him to hurt the people they don’t like. Some resort to nostalgia (as in TV shows of the ’60s and ’70s).
- Ch 4. And many see flaws in the system as something that justifies throwing the entire system out. This arises from a lack of appreciate of the “general welfare” and that the system can and should constantly be re-examined and improved. But complexity doesn’t sell; slogans do. People don’t like change, expecting every town to have the right to exist forever. Globalization has not ruined everything; that feeling arises from short memories, from rising expectations, immediate gratification, and little accountability.
- Ch 5. And hyper-connectivity allows crackpot ideas to spread, undermining the patience and perspective that liberal democracy requires. Connection makes all experiences immediate, heightens our sense of danger, making us susceptible to disinformation. No amount of statistic can calm this sense of constant danger. It all undermines our ability for normal social activity. Algorithms foster tribalism. People flaunt their consumerism. And inevitable demographic change alarms people afraid of becoming a cultural minority.
- Conclusion. Author wishes people to become better citizens, e.g. read a reputable newspaper and turn off social media. Beware the reassurance of the pack and the safety of the herd; grapple with the ambiguities and consequences of freedom. Three modest proposals: The political parties should remain grounded in principles; military culture might be replaced by a civilian ‘summer of service’; and more participation in democracy might be achieved by expanding the size of the US House, creating more than 50 states, or through institutions not beholden to the majority. Finally, author contemplates three “nightmare” scenarios and suggests we’re closest to one in which insiders will take control of the government because voters can’t produce coherent demands, life will go on, and people won’t care that elections are meaningless.
(There are overlaps here with recent books by several other authors: Haidt, Rauch, Reich, O’Connor and Weatherall.)
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Full notes:
Preface
Author recalls how he came to write The Death of Expertise. He got many questions about how long we could go on like this. He tried to be calm. And yet he worried. He was a scholar of the Soviet Union. Its collapse gave him some hope. Maybe we were making progress. But then came Putin. And Trump. Yet illiberal populists are lousy at governing, e.g. how the pandemic was mismanaged. And so Trump was driven from office.
Introduction: Our Own Worst Enemy, p1
Everywhere we hear about how these are the worst times ever. For various reasons. The Estonian president Toomas Ilves said this was all nonsense. Actually, we’ve never had it so good, in many ways. Still, it’s not perfect. Is it democracy’s fault? Many seem to think so. January 2021; the appeal of military rule; whether violence is justified. Who’s to blame? Many say: elites. That’s an essence of populism: people “who just want to work at good jobs and be left alone.” Those who feel themselves victims seeks saviors. The populist right is “a movement mired in nostalgia and social revenge that has emerged as the main threat to liberal democracy over the past twenty years” p5.8. Trump depicts the US as a failed state, in 2017. The state of the planet is a rebuke. Yet introspection is worthwhile. Author recalls Walt Kelly’s Pogo and the maxim “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” We face the consequences of our own behavior.
Is it time to worry? P10. Democracy is pretty resilient. And it’s not just about particular policies, as Peggy Noonan tried to claim. There are no movements to reform, just sullen resentfulness. And a tendency to elevate showmen like Trump or Bolsonaro or Boris Johnson. And conspiracy theories. The US has had such figures before, 13m. But never like Trump. Similarly Brexit. (ref Pinker, 15b, life better in the past) Italy, Ukraine, India. Even Switzerland and Canada have their moments. US institutions still function. The decline is subtle and gradual. Democracy will not fall via dictatorships, but through subversion of its institutions. Endorsed by voters. Today’s anger is not like the problems of past decades, 20b, but instead from the working and middle classes… with “a childlike understanding of the limits of government.” p20b. Why is all this: The answers are, p21.3: “We are losing because we won. We are suffering because we are successful. We are unhappy because we have what we want.”
[[ This suggests that, yet again, problems of today are a matter of a human nature refined over millions of years for life in a different environment than we are in today. And the standard myopia, that we don’t remember the past, or think it must have been better than it was… ]]
P21, What’s Ahead.
Author recalls Damon Knight’s “An Eye for a What?” from 1957, in which the punishment for a misbehaving alien, from a rigidly hidebound culture, is: “Do as you please.” Ch1 explores this idea. We have unequaled peace and prosperity. Ch2 is about a village in Italy burdened by poverty. Ch3 concerns how Americans are discarding foundational virtues of democracy. More than just bad citizenship. Maybe some people have a right to be angry. Maybe some elected leaders do enrich themselves. Ch4 engages these charges; which have merit, and which are self-pity? Ch5 is about how connectedness has turned to chaos. We’ve chosen to be disinformed, to have our tribalism confirmed. Final chapter will outlines some solutions. National service, redistribution of income, mechanisms of government. Democracy is “the system of government that most accords with what is best in human nature.” p26.7. [[ note the qualification “best” ]]
Ch1, A Hunger for Apocalypse: the perils of peace and plenty, p27
Recalls Obama in 2016 about living in the most peaceful, prosperous, progressive era in human history. (There’s a ref to Easterbrook’s bk in note.) Some would say author has no right to agree; he lives an easy life. (also ref the Davies’ bk Nervous States) We have to account for people’s feelings. People have a tendency to forget. In 1951 Eric Hoffer warned of the danger of boredom. George Will, in 2020, noted that affluent societies often ‘hunger for apocalypse.’ To give drama to life. So the issue is whether the achievements of the past half century have the unintended consequence of undermining democracy. Look at these in turn: peace, affluence, and technological progress.
P32, Peace—At a Price
The world is more peaceful now than it was in 1970 or 1980, even if it doesn’t seem so. We can look it up. Yet many think America is endlessly ‘at war’. And they don’t believe that violent crime is down since the 1990s. Author recalls high school in 1975, just after the draft had ended. Vietnam war still going. Compare to today. No one today not directly involved in the military suffer any inconvenience from any war. Public opinion has no effect. Once the cold war ended the idea of a common threat ended. ISIS? They turned out to be not so much a threat. The Iraq War was a bungle, but Bush was reelected. …
P38, It Doesn’t Feel Like Affluence
Again, author’s students shake their heads at the idea that we live in an affluent time. Everyone knows these are terrible times! Yet people think times are bad even when their own situations are fine. (Psychology.) Not even the recession of 2008 has changed attitudes. Some things really are out of reach for many people. A problem for democracy is that people are fixated in a sense of *relative* deprivation. Income inequality feeds this. And the media feds us idealized lives of others. It’s a cycle of expectation and disappointment, of progress and change. Once people get this idea that good times are never good enough, it’s hard to change their minds. And it’s open-ended; the problem of hedonic adaptation. Some people make lots of money and spend it all, always living on the edge. Yet consider the things we have now that we didn’t in the 1970s, 42b, from smartphones to the internet to GPS. It’s a higher standard of living, even if they’re just gadgets. [[ Also, he doesn’t mention that people’s houses are much bigger ]] We must understand the difference between false nostalgia for the past and the reality of the present. Yes college was cheaper years ago, but it wasn’t widely distributed. And so on. The world of decades ago was one of unsafe cars, smoking at work, women staying home, and the threat of global annihilation. The ‘50s were great if you were a white male, not so great for many others. Also, oddly, it’s not the poorest who are complaining; it’s the upper and middle classes. Comfortably off populist voters are behind Trump, and similarly in Europe. Recalls Will Rogers and the movie A Face in the Crowd. The 2021 Capitol attack mob were bored middle-class citizens with incomes that allowed them to visit Washington. 48b. Americans have come to expect continual improvement in their standard of living. But not every generation will live 3 or 4 times better than their parents. All of this amounts to a no-win situation for a democratic government.
P50, Technological Progress and Social Decline
Gordon Moore’s rule heated up in the 1990s. Technology drives expectations. We were promised flying cars. David Frum’s counter, 51.8: “I was promised flying cars, and instead all I got was all the world’s libraries in my pocket and the ability to videochat 24-hours a day for free with my grandchildren on the other side of the world.” But now we’re connected to such a degree it’s unhealthy. We connect in a virtual world and avoid contact in the physical world. [[ This is the core theme of the recent Haidt book ]] We’ve become performative, and not reflective. The 2021 attack was some of that. We can’t absorb everything that rains down on us. It would take 15 hours a day! 53.2. True, it helped blunt the impact of COVID. Will we fall out of love with our screens?
P54, Happiness is a Hard Master
So democracies, it seems, cannot cope with peace, affluence, and progress. This doesn’t mean we should hope for a reversal. Recall Huxley and Orwell. In the 1980s Neil Postman figured Huxley was right. Amusing ourselves to death. He was ahead of his time. We need to look back further, not to de Tocqueville, but to a small Italian village in the 1950s… Everyone got along, but they didn’t care about each other.
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Ch2, The Nicest People You’ll Ever Dislike: When good neighbors are bad citizens, p57
Quote by Hannah Arendt about idiots, and how a truly free state is one in which everyone takes part in what is common.
Democracy cannot survive if citizens have only a mercenary sense of self-interest with no sense of civic responsibility. How do we judge whether people are good citizens? Advice can sound like moral hectoring. That’s why we prefer to blame ‘the system’. But there are obvious ways to be bad citizens.
It’s easy to be sociable. The word idiot derives from the Greek for pertaining only to oneself. But what’s wrong with caring only for one’s family? Consider this Italian town.
P51, “No One Interests Himself in the General Welfare”
It began with a government worker, Banfield, puzzled by how people receiving farm aid refused to cooperate with each other. He visited a poor town in Italy, in 1956. “Montegrano.” They were poor and mistrustful. He wrote a book about them: The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. He concluded that the townspeople lacked the moral qualities that allow cooperation, respecting rights, and treat each other as a community, rather than selfish children. Social capital, as scholars now call those qualities. There were no charities, not enough food, just two churches, a doctor largely absent. And most people want to prevent others from getting ahead. Another term: amoral familism. Only their families matter; civic involvement is a snare for suckers. [[ well this is all consistent with basic tribal human nature ]] [[ at the same time, there must be a term or understanding for how certain social patterns can become stuck in a community, perhaps simply because it has no contact with others? Extreme insularity? ]] Only the family matters; no wider understanding of a governmental system makes sense to them. This recalls the Italian Mafia mentality. Recall The Godfather Part II. The final scene. In this town, no one trusts elected officials. The writer contrasts that town with St. George, Utah, where civic interaction is common. The Italian town reflects the collapse of trust in institutions in the US. Americans have the same excuses the Italians did. But these are hollow excuses, the writer found. He found no solution. Their attitude still pervades Italian politics. Berlusconi was like them. [[ well, and Trump ]]
P71, We’re All Villagers Now
Author suggests a ‘recessive gene’ in political DNA somehow Roman. But It’s important because Americans are becoming like that. Surveys about how Americans don’t feel they have the time or knowledge to make decisions, that politicians should make them. No longer Norman Rockwell’s man speaking at a town meeting. Now Americans prefer the excitement of celebrities. Example of how Trump was a TV star and Clinton was dull. Most American voters don’t have stable ideological views, beyond party identification. That’s why Bernie supporters and Democrats ended up voting for Trump. Voters say they are moderate, but they’re not, 75m. Rauch: Sanders’ plans were delusional. Examples of voters in Iowa who began with Sanders and Buttigieg but ended up voting for Trump. Some voted for Trump just to shake up Washington. More examples, some incoherent. 78b. Examples the author knows. And of course, Americans often don’t understand the ideologies they claim to support. Rauch again. Of course everyone takes self-interest into account. But with nothing else, democracy is impossible. (Note: actually he keeps saying ‘liberal democracy’, making some distinction.)
P81, Alone Against the Storm
Then came the pandemic in 2020. Every nation faced the threat; some passed; the US failed miserably. Millions of Americans did whatever they wanted and didn’t care about the consequences. Trump later admitted downplaying it. No one crippled the US response more than Trump. Americans resent being told what to do. As deaths rose, Trump and his supporters doubled down. It reverted to the politics of the village. Franklin Foer drew on Banfield to criticize Trump and Jared Kushner. Obama spoke to the responsibility of citizens at the 2020 convention…
P85, No More Excuses
Democracy will always have a hard time gaining foothold against the immediate imperatives of survival, 85.6. Americans are now devolving toward the mentality of the village because they are comfortable, materialistic, and self-obsessed. They’re inspired by celebrity rather than by virtue. What excuses do we have?
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Ch3, p87: “Is There No Virtue Among Us?”: Democracy in an age of rage and resentment.
P87, An Unvirtuous Nation
What if many of our neighbors aren’t just bad citizens, but no longer virtuous? But we can hardly judge people’s virtue; there are no tests for citizens. But the founders understood the need for virtue. And the connection between private and public virtue. And that no institution could stand if people gave way to their base instincts. James Madison quote. They had no illusions about human nature. Though they themselves were a mixed bag. But there will always be such people. If we’re all such people, democracy won’t work.
P91, The Narcissism Pandemic
This is the most important ingredient in the decline of modern democracy. It goes along with entitlement. How did we end up here? It’s been seen coming as far back as 1979, with Christopher Lasch. Americans as overgrown children. Lasch and Frum were reacting to the 1970s; Lilla comments. Later commentators spoke of the “perpetual adolescence of many American adults.” Including the ‘easy credit’ one gets from social media. This became an interest in narcissistic public figures, like Clinton. And of course Trump. It’s disturbing how many Americans seem to identify with him. He’s a sign of something amiss in popular culture. Some of the adulation for Obama was narcissistic. It spreads like a disease.
P98, Your Hate Has Made You Powerful
Anger may seem to make you powerful (Star Wars) but it’s bad for you and poison to liberal democracies. Why are people so angry? Not only in America. And worried and stressed. Other polls found happiness and satisfaction with their lives. There has to be overlap. One explanation is that humans are bad at assessing risk. They think things in general are bad while their own circumstances are good. Disagreements spill over into contempt. But anger should not be the default condition of a democracy. Quote by Lilla. Existential struggles are more interesting. Thus the ‘Flight 93’ election. And ‘the most important election in our lifetime.’ David French on how ‘they’ are evil and loathsome. Especially among right-wing populists. These narratives are nonsense, but attractive precisely because life is generally good… 104m. The narratives make personal misfortunes examples of larger stories. Thus you don’t just lose an election, it’s that it was rigged.
P105, The Power of Resentment
Democracies involve cycles of winners and losers changing places, while authoritarianism promises stability. Resentment is about vengeance; it undermines civic virtues. It is an envy of others, whom you therefore want to tear down. Both the right and the left think the others side is full of resentment. Recall a peasant joke; recall the film Mississippi Burning, about the Jim Crow era. Such racial attitudes linger. Examples of refusing care so that no one else gets it either. About Obamacare. A Trump fan: he’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting. Populist voters want their heroes to hurt the people they don’t like. The book What’s the Matter with Kansas? People rage at the ‘culture’ rather than look at themselves. Something that began in the 1960s. And there’s left-wing grievance as well. Lilla again. In a democracy, people get what they want, and getting that makes them miserable.
P115, Nostalgia: They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar
Includes a yearning for times that never were; a ‘restorative’ nostalgia. In the 70s, reacting to the 60s, there was MASH and Happy Days. And others. And Rod Serling’s story on Night Gallery. Serling was nostalgic; recall his early TZ episodes. Same year as All in the Family, steeped with bitter nostalgia for simpler times. Example of riots between hard hat workers and students; the former said nobody cared about what they wanted. It’s a restorative, delusional nostalgia that’s now spreading throughout the world. People believe life was better 50 years ago. But for a government to respond to public demand to return to an imagined past will lead to collapse. Among other reasons, for the inability to handle trials like the pandemic.
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Ch4, p122, System Failure? Human Suffering and the Case against Liberal Democracy
Frum quote about how failures of a basically good system to not justify replacing it with something evil. Author recalls Sep 2020 story about a woman who died in a nursing home in his hometown, of a preventable disease. What went wrong? Critics say only the rich benefit from the era of wonders and inventions. The elites are out to destroy the lives of authentic, hard-working commoners. (As in Metropolis.) But it’s not true. Yet to argue it might sound dismissive of human pain… 125t:
A truly humane system leaves open the possibility of collective action, of decisions for change, of accountability from those we appoint as the stewards of what the U.S. Constitution calls “the general welfare.” These mechanisms, wedded to the liberal idea that every human being has inherent value and — if I might steal a phrase — unalienable rights, are the heart of modern democracy. To recognize honestly and with compassion that these systems, their arrangements, and the people who run them can produce awful outcomes is not an admission that liberal democracy is hopeless; rather, it is the societal self-examination that is among the greatest duties of a citizen and a sign of virtue in a democratic society.
[[ This aligns with Reich’s “Common Good” and Rauch’s “Constitution of Knowledge.” The current awful outcome being the president. ]]
P125, The Unlucky Horseshoe
Complaints of the right and the left become more alike as they become more extreme. Example of speech by Pat Buchanan – not about Trump, but about Joseph McCarthy. Other examples of elites taking jobs away from others. Author is a bit sympathetic about charges against ‘individualism’ and ‘liberalism’ 128. Critics of democracy argue that these are destructive to human communities. … but critics conflate these matters with accusations that the system has failed.
P131, Globalization and Democracy: “It’s *not* the Economy, Stupid”
Globalization is always the villain accused of destroying the golden past. Or Globalism. (aka neoliberalism). Where the ends of the horseshoe meet. At least by 1999. Populism isn’t just about the economy. China shock. … Americans love cheap Chinese goods. And they love spending and going into debt, e.g. with 7-year car loans. 136b: “The problem in all this for supporters of liberal democracy is that complexity doesn’t sell, and it doesn’t move votes nearly as well as rage and resentment.” Examples of boring slogans. [[ This is a key to trump’s appeal. As I keep saying: conservatives prefer the simple-minded to the recognition of complexity in the world. ]] What should we do? 137b. Consumerism is a choice, not a force of nature. And so people complains they are living in misery.
P138, A Word About Race
When cities failed, it was because of liberal policies that benefited minorities. When small towns began to fail, it was a tragedy, a crisis, an epidemic. Trump promised to save them.
P140, Witnesses to Decline
Fiona Hill, who worked for Trump: populism rarely succeeds because almost by definition it produces leaders who are unfit to govern. Ian Bremmer. Kevin Williamson. The US has a romanticized sense of place, in which every town has the right to exist forever; change will always inconvenience somebody. If your town is in decline, move. People have always worried about opportunities, about health. Our memories trick us. Example of Andre Dubus in 1972, 143b. The postindustrial culture of despair. Author recalls Uniroyal shutting down in his town, making old-style bias-ply tires. Author had a job helping it close. It never reopened. …Globalization wrecked the economy? No; our memories are short.
P147, The Song Remains the Same
A detour through popular culture. Recalls the music he grew up listening to. Mostly middle of the road pop. There were two signature forms. Concerns about nuclear war, and the end of the American dream. That is, previous generations have felt that democracy had failed. Randy Newman, Billy Joel, especially Springsteen. Similar in England. It’s all been downhill since the end of World War II, or since 1970 or so. In the 50s and 60s songs were always about boy meets girl. Nostalgia for that time leads to the populism of Trump and forgetting what life was really like. The song remains the same.
P151, The Crisis of Accountability
So democracy hasn’t failed; it’s that voters and their elected representatives play a game of rising expectations, immediate gratification, and little accountability. The 2008 Great Recession, predictable and preventable, driven by the goal of universal homeownership. And no one was held accountable. Quick summary of presidential elections. Leaders of both parties remained in office over decades.
P155, The Center Does Not Hold
This is too pessimistic. The liberal democratic ideal is not invalidated. Citizens have to find common ground, accept that they live in a community. Wouldn’t communication help? It hasn’t turned out that way.
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Ch5, p157, Hello, I Hate You: how hyper-connection is destroying democracy
The Great Indian Food Scandal. Author doesn’t like Indian food, and many know this because of his response to a social media stunt in 2019. He got flack. He made the news in India. He got threats. Other people have had it worse. Malicious actors use the internet to undermine democratic elections. (See author’s previous book.) Online conspiracy theories have gotten destructive. The Jan 6 riots. Examples of the realtor and the resort in Mexico. They were a crackpot religion that grew in the swamp of a hyper-connected country. Their holy text was the twitter feed of the president, claiming the election had been stolen. Humanity had found another great tool, and we’re at risk of using to destroy ourselves.
P162, The Vast and Lonely Spaces
Our ability to connect anytime with many people has created a vast and lonely space. The price is the patience and perspective that liberal democracy requires. The scale of the problem is enormous. Numbers of users of Twitter and Facebook. Amazon. Pornhub. But all these connections entail risks of leakage. And we can’t avoid controversy and disagreements. Some think all social ills can be traced to social media. It’s almost inescapable. Connection makes us angrier, more isolated, more selfish. Author admits he uses social media too. And is optimistic. He doesn’t miss the old days before social media. He’s seen the changes happening. The fall of the Soviet Union. But citizens are now poisoning themselves with hyper-connectivity. Postman said we were ‘amusing ourselves to death’; now we’re ‘shitposting’ ourselves to death.
P167, How Connection Destroys Democracy
First, it makes all experiences immediate, overloads our ability to process and heightening our sense of danger, making us susceptible to disinformation. It creates constant awareness of each other, encouraging comparison, and performative narcissism. It speeds up change and creates a sense of competition. That creates groups who feel on the wrong side of change. It undermines compromise and negotiation.
P169, Danger, Will Robinson!
Being connected all day is like listening to that robot yelling about danger all the time. Breaking news; alert. People want to be personally involved. We not only focus on bad news, we seek it out. Doomscrolling. Everyone is anxious. No amount of statistics seems to assuage this sense of constant danger. And the conclusion that the government is a failure. There used to be editors. Timothy Snyder ref about a post-factual society.
P172, “The Devil Lives in our Phones”
This in turns affects our ability for normal social activity. The architects of social media know this. Facebook. Especially children. [[ Again this synchs with Haidt ]] Addictions. More anxiety and depression. Republicans who like to ‘own the libs.’ Example of a BuzzFeed employee who eventually became part of Jan 6th. Older people do it too, and they’re a lost cause. 176.2. “No one in late middle age is going to develop a new appreciation for reason and nuance after years of believing that memes are facts.”
P176, How to Meet New People and Hate Them
Hyper-connectedness encourages intimacy. People get to know too much about each other. Familiarity breeds contempt. Algorithms foster tribalism. The internet of beefs. TV does the same. But not newspapers. Readers are joiners; viewers are loners. Differences are magnified.
P179, The Envy Engine
And people flaunt their consumerism. Vacations, cars, etc. We’re in each other’s homes all day. (Except for the smart ones who know better than to show off.) We focus on small differences. Countertops. We can browse Zillow. HGTV. All of this leads to depression. …
P184, One Culture to Rule Them All
In 2019, Yoni Applebaum suggested demographic change as a cause of rancor. Which worries white Christian working class, becoming a cultural minority. People everywhere are aware of it, even if it doesn’t affect them. There’s just one culture on the internet. All elections are now national elections. Less local news, more national. The decline of ticket-splitting. Isolated incidents affect nationwide elections. Rap music. … ultimately people blame democracy for their culture’s destruction.
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Conclusion, p191: Is There a Road Back?
191, The Limits of Willpower
Solutions? Knowledge and virtue are in short supply. People actively seek out disinformation. And make impossible demands from their government. A society of ill-tempered toddlers. Defeating self-education and compromise. Most people are unwilling to, e.g. read a reputable newspaper and turn off social media and cable shows. People have the leisure to fight with each other… 192. Consider medical care in the US. The people send divided governments to Washington. Some would let the uninsured just die, as long as it doesn’t raise their taxes. They’re ignorant about the ACA. And foreign affairs. Politicians just want to keep getting elected. At the risk of moral hectoring, people need to be better citizens. Imagine a Prime Directive of civic life, e.g. 195m “Treat all your fellow citizens, regardless of their political views, as your civic and political equals.” Become politically mature. But how to convince people to do that? [[ I have a book called The Bill of Obligations, by Richard Haas, on this topic, which I’ll get to soon. ]]
P186, The Authoritarian Temptation
Maybe people are the problem. 196.6: “Alone in a world full of bewildering options, human beings will prefer the reassurance of the pack and the safety of the herd rather than choose to grapple with the ambiguities and consequences of freedom.” [[ This again maps to my table of moral polarities. ]] This is the authoritarian temptation. (Charles Krauthammer.) Such measures have been tried. Rule by god, or the learned, or the mob. But democratic institutions can change and improve….
P199, Three Modest Proposals
These should be doable.
1, The party should decide. Many think they’re too strong; recall the debate disasters. The parties are too swayed by political entrepreneurs and interest groups. Parties should remain grounded in principles. They should mean something.
2, Military service and the culture of Spartanism. The ideals author has experienced have drifted away, especially under Trump. Now military volunteers seem to expect some privileged place in society. Details. The civilians are usually the source of the problem. And military excursions that are not judged by their success. An option might be a ‘summer of service,’ say, six weeks in uniform…
3, Constitutional Reform. The American system of government is now ineffective and crisis-prone, says David Frum in 2019. Now we have presidents without majorities of the vote. This, along with Trump, has led to some harebrained proposals. Some kind of reform is needed. The size of the US House might increase. Perhaps more than 50 states. More democracy isn’t necessarily the answer; more participation, maybe, by informed voters through institutions that are not at the mercy of a majority… 207b. Political elites, in the best sense.
P208, Three Nightmares
“Proles and Animals are Free”. We might all becomes proles, the mindless lowest order of society, who care about nothing. Orwell quote 209b. And beneath suspicion. We live in Huxley’s world now. Decadent, hedonistic, and un-serious. … “kept in line with calories, intoxicants, pornography, and two hundred sports channels.” 211.5. At best, we’ll settle into a society of “good enough.”
“Just Get It for Them”. Recalling Three Days of the Condor. The last scene. Governments who don’t ask what constituents want, just get what they need. This worries author more than any other. Insiders will take control because voters can’t produce coherent demands. Life will go on, and most people won’t care that the elections are meaningless. We’re close to this now.
The Glory That Was Greece. Americans have often imagined themselves as heirs to Greek democracy of the 5th C BC. Pericles gave an oration for the war dead, 216. And promised to open their city to the world. Can we regain these senses? Author recalls Jefferson, Lincoln. But Athens became the same cruel empire as the Spartans they opposed. They were defeated, and Pericles died of plague.
