Democrat and Republican elites have lost control of their respective ideologies, moral values and political character, and are in the process of destroying the social contract between voters and representatives. These elites don’t understand that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the consequences, and not the cause, of their failure to govern, and to protect democracy from nationalists and oligarchs.
These elites have merged politics with media and cynically use mass-market lowbrows like Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington to transform legislative debate into episodes of the World Wrestling Federation. What matters to politicians today is control of the 24-hour news cycle, and success in manipulating self-interested True Believers who wouldn’t know or consent to the common Good if it perched on their noses.
Ten years after the financial crisis, banks are still “too big to fail” and getting bigger. In 2017, two-thirds of our economy is owned and controlled by fewer people than in 1997. Both parties are okay with modern-day plutocracies like Amazon, Google and Facebook smashing non-digital competitors, and they’re fine with them controlling public debate by manipulating the information we access. They’re glad that “social media” has turned the exchange of ideas into an echo chamber because the result is a narcissistic political culture unable to form broad alliances that might upset their establishment applecart.
There is no Republican or Democrat savior in the future. These self-serving hacks have conned voters into focusing on their rights as citizens, rather than on their responsibilities. Americans argue about their right to say “Merry Christmas” and do little to make Christmas merry. We demand justice, or we demand compassion, without considering that justice without compassion is hollow, and compassion without justice is fraudulent. We have allowed politicians, and schools and churches to separate ideas about freedom and equality from their necessary connections to fraternity and the common good.
“Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite,” Joseph de Maestre wrote. “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” If we elect a politician who, for example, “can’t recall” an event everyone else recalls, we’ve elected a politician who puts party before truthfulness. Is that who we deserve?
Apparently so.