Everyone involved in politics today agrees on one thing.
You’re an idiot.
Republicans believe you’re too stupid to see through their lies, starting with the big one, that they won the last election.
Democrats believe you’re too stupid to see Republican extremism as incipient fascism, a threat to the Republic as profound as what Lincoln or FDR faced.
Pundits agree. After talking to each other, and to operatives in both parties, they’re united in believing that American democracy is doomed.
None of this is true.
Republicans are confusing the acting out of a minority with the views of a majority. That acting out is acceptable to a majority within their party, but that’s still a small minority of the total electorate.
Democrats are confusing passivity with acceptance. They see people trying to get on with their lives and assume we don’t care about politics. The truth is we don’t want to care about politics. We shouldn’t have to be obsessives 24/7 to be good citizens.
All this is made worse by the state of the press.
Half is under a patronage business model. They’re being paid by rich Republicans to spout propaganda. But that’s just what the press was when George Washington was President. It’s what was meant by the First Amendment prohibiting government from restricting freedom of the press, speech, or religion.
The other half of the press is built on either a subscription or clickbait business model. Keeping subscriptions up means keeping people agitated. Getting clicks means anger, fear and hatred all sell. Normal, daily reality doesn’t move the needle.
Neither politicians nor the elite media is reflecting reality.
First, we’re focused on our lives. Compared with people on a global scale our lives are relatively easy. American technology dominates the world. The Cloud Czars are taking over the world’s market. Change and progress continue to accelerate. Jobs are plentiful, raises available. The market is a better gauge of sentiment than any poll. It’s at all-time highs.
Second, demography is destiny. The people who are dying right now are the same ones who are complaining the loudest. Every day, thousands of intolerant assholes die, and thousands in more-tolerant Generation Z become old enough to vote.
Third, Democrats have won nearly all our 21st century elections. Bush won in 2000 because of the Supreme Court. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. Policies that favor human capital and creativity, are what the technology industry has sought, and what it has gotten. Such policies have advanced even under Republican Presidents. Pretending we’re about to turn 180 degrees because of the Supreme Court or the Big Lie is naïve.
The bottom line is that it’s the elites who are out of touch, not the American people. We’re focused on our lives, as we’ve always been. Those lives are filled with trouble, even in the best of times. But we still believe in America, in democracy, in liberty, and in the creativity economy.
That’s not changing.
