I’d like to see a poll done
in the US, and other countries where the values of the Western tradition abide
for that matter, that asks the question: given a choice, would you prefer
democracy as it exists now in your country, or an autocracy of some sort, assuming
the assurance that that autocracy would govern in a just and reasonable way [an
assurance which of course would be quite hollow]? My guess is the results of a
poll like that, after you’ve explained to the average voter what ‘autocracy’
means, would shed much light on the rise of people like Sanders and Trump and
explain why Hillary, a walking talking manifestation of political corruption
and dishonesty and a shining example of why elites engender such distrust and
disaffection among an increasingly large plurality of voters, is so hated.
[although Obama, every bit as
much of a liar as Hillary and himself a perfect example of the entrenched
idiocy of the leftist elite, is still popular - but there are reasons for this
that have nothing to do with how awful a president he has been, not least of
which is the left pushing so relentlessly the idea that not liking Dear
Leader is tantamount to racism that many people I think tell pollsters they
‘like’ him simply to avoid that stain]
Indeed, several polls published
recently do confirm a growing scepticism when it comes to democracy and
a cynical or despairing or impatient or naive yearning for a ‘something else’ -
that this something else does not and has never existed [in a viable form]
leaves the yearners lots of room to imagine fanciful scenarios - from the
‘enlightened’ socialist bureaucracy that Sanders’ supporters seem to long for
to the fair but tough strongman rule that Trump’s supporters seem to dream
about [although I’m not sure Trump’s supporters really know what they
want apart from knowing they can’t stand the status quo and Trump captures that
feeling - I like to think the average Trump enthusiast is not a bigot
etc etc but rather a person who when they hear a progressive whine on about
safe spaces and transgender washrooms etc etc shakes their head and mumbles
‘who are these fucking morons and why are they in my life?’ - I think
progressives have turned liberalism towards a delusional ideological wasteland
and that there are many ‘average’ people out there who sense that reality and know
that the media and various institutions have and are enabling that turn and
they long for someone to emerge that can set things ‘straight’ - I think media
bias has undermined democracy, has undermined the whole point of freedom which
far as I’m concerned is to allow for and to sustain the marketplace of
competing ideas - the stark polarization we’re seeing is a result of it and
polarization is inherently undemocratic since the life blood of democracy is
compromise and how to you compromise with people you hate? The progressive
elite without question does not simply disagree with conservatism but utterly
loathes it and those who practice it - and now you have a strong plurality of
erstwhile conservatives - since Trumpsters really aren’t conservative per se -
who respond with similar enmity and disdain not just towards the liberal elite
but the so called ‘establishments’ of both parties].
[In many ways the Founders
anticipated this problem which is why we have the system of checks and balances
that we have - but if SCOTUS turns left and significant institutions incline
left and the media is sympathetic to a leftist agenda and you have a left wing
POTUS willing to rule by executive fiat rather than compromise with people he
hates as Obama has tried and often succeeded in doing - then what good are all
those checks and balances? What good is a Republican establishment that wants
to play by the Founders rules when the left increasingly seems to view those
rules as mere impediments to the grand socialist wonderland they long to
create? When you drill down into the heart of the matter, it’s that reality and
the angry, intransigent partisanship it leads to that made Trump and Sanders
possible - liberals increasingly act as if they of course are right
about everything and anyone who disagrees must be either stupid or mentally ill
- and these supposedly stupid and or deviant plebs look upon this progressive
monster with fear and dread, despise the Republican establishment for failing
to stop it, and turn to the outsider strongman illusion in hopes of being saved
- which is why this election was never about ideas but rather always about
emotions, feelings - the feeling on the left of entitled superiority and the
naive idealism it engenders - Sanders - and on the right and not so right the
feelings of anger and fear and resentment and a longing for a return to
something that seems more like the America they knew - Trump - the left sees in
this longing racism but the left sees racism in everything - the longing is
more a reflection of many people sensing in their bones that the country is in
a bad place and not getting better and fearing that Washington is either too
corrupt or too feeble or too misguided or too inept to do anything about it]
[It’s odd or interesting that
you see a similar dynamic in the Brexit vote - but with the nationalist urge
leading to the embrace and celebration of democracy rather than expressing a
deep cynicism thereof - but this makes sense because the bureaucratic
dictatorship that the EU is morphing into is explicitly undemocratic in its
goals since it wants to destroy national identities and therefore if you desire
to escape the clutches of that progressive beast you naturally will do so by
embracing democracy as an expression of national will, especially if you’re
from a country that is the birth place of constitutional democracy. And when it
comes to Trump you shouldn’t confuse a dislike and distrust of politicians with
a dislike and distrust of democracy itself - the two can be connected but not
necessarily so - the rise of feelings of frustration about democracy may have
more to do with politicians than the institution per se - although certainly
the idealism of the left has always been animated by strong undemocratic urges
- see liberal elite in the 30s fawning over Stalin and Hitler - this is because
liberalism as it has existed since let’s say Rousseau - and what we now know
more accurately as progressivism - is an idealist ideology and therefore absolutist
by nature and therefore intolerant of competing ideas and therefore not at ease
with democracy - conservatism is empirical and therefore pragmatic and
therefore comfortable with democracy because conservatives believe it a means
for containing extremism - although 8 years of a leftist ideologue in the White
House and the rise of people like Sanders and Trump may be causing many
conservatives to question the ongoing validity of that belief.
I think it was Emerson who
said something to the effect that conservatives are much more comfortable with
facts than liberals - and that’s because facts have a tendency to run rough
shod over idealist assumptions and presumptions - John Adams said facts are
stubborn things - if you’re a progressive they’re also pernicious - if I write
an article that contends that the problem with Islam is that it’s more a
political ideology than it is a religion and I put a link to this article on
Twitter, the stalwart progressives running Twitter will tag this tweet as
possible hate speech so that its fearful users can stay well clear of ‘facts’
that do not fit what they want to believe - increasingly for progressives, free
speech is only that speech which they have sanctioned.
Regardless, one disquieting
fact that conservatives may have to start paying attention to is this: if the
country is broken, are we sure that, given the current state of affairs,
democracy is up to the task of fixing it? Many may still think yes, and maybe
rightly so - but if people who think and act like Obama are the future of the
American left and conservatives for a variety of reasons - increasingly biased
media and institutions, changing demographics, Trump breaks the GOP - find
themselves unable to win the White House - and you get a string of liberal presidents
willing to rule by executive fiat and a corrupted SCOTUS that devolves into
nothing more than another political organ of the left - well, then you can
definitely see how American democracy would be threatened because a great many
people who do not share the progressive world view would be left with no viable
voice that represents them - at that point ‘conservative’ power would shift
from a hobbled Congress to the states and that’s where the battle line would be
drawn against what in effect would be a growing liberal tyranny. Sounds far
fetched - but when you couple the rise of populists like Trump and Sanders with
the ideological extremism of Obama and his willingness to flat out lie and
ignore both the constitution and Congress to move his agenda forward - not that
far fetched I think. I mean, just consider the IRS scandal - worse than
anything Nixon ever did and the media pretty much just ignores it - that’s the
media telling any future leftist president to go ahead and do whatever the hell
they want as long as it serves the great cause. Stuff like that will break a
democracy - after all, what’s the first thing a dictator does once seizing
control? Takes over the media. Erdogan in Turkey, taking over the media -
Putin, took over the media - China, controls the media. The American left can
check control of the media off the tyrant’s to do list - so maybe our democracy
is already broken and Trump and Sanders and for that matter Obama are just the
first manifestations of it]
[of course liberals don’t
really control the ‘media’ per se - what they control or seek to control or
increasingly control is the dominating narrative - the dominating
narrative keeps the already indoctrinated safely ensconced in the progressive
echo chamber, keeps minorities and immigrants recumbent before the idea that
democrats are good and republicans are bad, and keeps independents, for the
nonce the crucial voting block of low info voters, confused. The key
fact here is that only conservatives consume conservative media - independents
go to CNN or left leaning social media feeds or something they saw on a late
night talk show etc etc for their ‘news’ - that’s the reality - it’s not
control of the media, it’s control of the dominating narrative. That’s where
the left wins - except it’s not a win, what it amounts to is a republic
divided, dysfunctional and cascading towards an existential crisis]
[the interesting thing is
when contemplating this existential crisis – if Trump wins, it will be because
he was right: there are a hell of a lot of angry white people out there, sick
and tired of being looked down upon and treated like the enemy by progressives,
worried that these progressives have an agenda that wants to fundamentally
change America – something Obama freely admitted to - and angry at the GOP
establishment for seeming to take their loyalty for granted. In other words, if
Trump wins it will mean the country is already broken – not because Trump is so
awful and dangerous – Obama is awful and dangerous – if Hillary represents his
3rd term she will be awful
and dangerous – no, broken because the country will be made up of two factions
with irreconcilably different views of what America is and should be. At the
recent Emmys someone called Trump Hitler and the crowd cheered wildly –
essentially that amounts to one half of America telling the other half they’re
a bunch of Nazis – and what that tells me is that if America is a marriage it’s
heading for an ugly divorce]
