Now, of course, voter ignorance or lassitude has long been a feature of and putative threat to democracy - and indeed autocrats who have predicted the demise of democracy have done so largely from a jaundiced, often mocking consideration of those vulnerabilities afflicting electorates - hell, the Founding Fathers themselves fretted over this issue at length. What worries though and leaves one doubting that past can be prologue here is that although in the past, sure, you had voter ignorance etc etc - still, those votes, however uniformed they might have been, were in general guided by fundamental principles and values that were at the end of the day a plus for the country - you know, things like strong work ethic, love of God and country, belief in family and marriage so on and so forth - you can't say that about the low info voter of today - I mean, a poll just published the other day made the absolutely startling claim that 34% of Americans never want to have a job - a hundred years ago you couldn't have found 34% of the population, hell, 3% of the population who had ever even just considered whether such an absurdity was possible. So that's disturbing.
But it's when you take the altered values of the low info voter and how this change inclines them towards outcomes that are relative to the past not so easily construed into looking like overall positives for the country and combine this with the simplistic seductive propaganda powers of new media that is biased towards a specific agenda that is by nature strongly motivated to encourage rather than question those negative outcomes - well, then you really start to run into problems I think as far as the health of your democracy goes.
Doom is not necessary - one can argue that the true genius of democracy is its ability to drive change and innovation and the way it empowers its citizens to effectively adapt to and accept those changes in what amounts to a constantly evolving process - and given that you can then argue that even though the system may seem somewhat broken right now, it will self correct - indeed, the disaster that is Obamacare and how it is changing peoples perception of Dear Leader and the progressivism he touts, may turn out to be the first instance of that self correction. Or it may not - you can look at the decline of Rome and see that a significant part of the problem was an abysmal failure to come up with kind of quality leadership required to meet the challenges it faced - sounds a whole lot like the America of today. For all the self propelling dynamism of democracy, much still depends on quality of leadership - and for us, where's that leadership gonna come from if the GOP commits ritual suicide and Hillary, blinded by ideological hubris, decides to govern as if Obama wasn't the worst president ever who left behind a mess in dire need of cleaning up?
But it's when you take the altered values of the low info voter and how this change inclines them towards outcomes that are relative to the past not so easily construed into looking like overall positives for the country and combine this with the simplistic seductive propaganda powers of new media that is biased towards a specific agenda that is by nature strongly motivated to encourage rather than question those negative outcomes - well, then you really start to run into problems I think as far as the health of your democracy goes.
Doom is not necessary - one can argue that the true genius of democracy is its ability to drive change and innovation and the way it empowers its citizens to effectively adapt to and accept those changes in what amounts to a constantly evolving process - and given that you can then argue that even though the system may seem somewhat broken right now, it will self correct - indeed, the disaster that is Obamacare and how it is changing peoples perception of Dear Leader and the progressivism he touts, may turn out to be the first instance of that self correction. Or it may not - you can look at the decline of Rome and see that a significant part of the problem was an abysmal failure to come up with kind of quality leadership required to meet the challenges it faced - sounds a whole lot like the America of today. For all the self propelling dynamism of democracy, much still depends on quality of leadership - and for us, where's that leadership gonna come from if the GOP commits ritual suicide and Hillary, blinded by ideological hubris, decides to govern as if Obama wasn't the worst president ever who left behind a mess in dire need of cleaning up?
