As an old white guy of nearly 80 who once was a merchant seaman, construction worker, Army NCO (all seems in another lifetime now), and who taught American history for over 40 years afterwards I can’t help but wonder if the fundamental problem is that far too many of us just don’t understand what this nation was designed to be. How many of us and how many of our kids are actually given a thorough grounding in the Constitution, so how can we expect ourselves to know what this country is and what it isn’t. Our professional politicians, who ought to be among the ones doing that clearly don’t. Our schools often seem to concentrate on all sorts of issues, but how many of them have teachers who could actually make such lessons possible or make it necessary and possible for their students to learn them.
But then how many of us, given the opportunity, would sit in front of their TV’s or computers and listen to the kind of thorough examination of any aspect of our political that, say, those who stood outside for hours listening to the Lincoln Douglas debates over what was then one of the crucial issues facing us. How many such debates does our political class provide about the issues facing us today, even if we could guarantee they would be more than just unchecked oppositional sound machines.
The other fundamental problem of more recent vintage, is that we have signally failed to teach both our kids and ourselves more about the complexity and interconnectedness of the world we now inhabit. Our vision of it seems to be a compendium of facts, distortions, half truths, lies, and sound bites of various veracity all of which tend to lead to the kind of simplistic understanding that leads so many of us to seek the equally unverified and simplistic answers provided by demagogues like Trump.
The Canadian folk singer Eileen McGann once penned and recorded a whimsical little ditty called I Think We’re Just Too Stupid for Democracy. I have to say that she may be on to something, although I’d be inclined to switch Under-educated for Stupid.
Thank you for a fantastic article - though I might add that while it's the Democrats who are (rightfully) taking the blame for this avoidable catastrophe, the movement/tendency/perspective under discussion is primarily a cultural rather than a political phenomenon, with which the Democratic Party as an institution is ultimately not synonymous. In other words, I think the party itself is salvageable. But they can still be justifiably held to account for allowing themselves to become associated with these people, in much the same way that the GOP can be held to account for allowing itself to become associated with white supremacists even if (obviously, after last night) the party is not itself accurately understood as a white supremacist institution.
Why did Trump win? Because the dominant elites were wedded to a woke ideology that Americans can't (and won't) accept. Let me use one example:
Just before the election Glenn Kessler gave Donald Trump 4 Pinocchio’s for claiming that Imane Khelif was/is a man. So much for fact checking. How about runaway media/elite bias? In real life, D. Trump was right and G. Kessler was wrong. The French endocrinologists who examined Imane Khelif found that he was/is male. The Bicetre hospital report leaked.
IMO the most insightful observation in this essay, on a topic hardly any of the post-election commentating has wanted to touch on, the issue of democracy as a campaign issue.
"And yet, it is time to admit that, in purely electoral terms, the argument that democracy is on the ballot simply does not seem to work. The reason for that is not just that people care more about pocketbook issues like inflation or that incumbents have in general had a bad run of late. It’s that they don’t trust Democrats on the issue of democracy much more than they do Republicans. According to one exit poll in Pennsylvania, three out of four voters in the state believe that democracy in the United States is threatened; among those who do, it was Trump, not Harris, who had the edge. "
Pretty clearly these voters did not really think that Trumpism is an avenue to save democracy. Trump's whole campaign modus operandi seemingly was to double down on his anti-democratic themes, and this tactic seemed to have won, not lost electoral support. Rather they have given up on Democracy completely, or at least couldn't fathom the idea Kamala as a savior of our Democracy.
An attitude actually not as farfetched as it sounds, at least to those following Yascha Mounk's deconstruction of Democratic Party identitarion politics. A look at Kamala Harris's entire bio shows her as the quintessential multicultural personna, from her Berkeley roots through her education to her career to her veep selection. Her trying to defend modern western/American democracy has the funny feel of hearing a Pope argue why he isn't really Catholic.
That's what I heard in the debate and rest of the campaign. Her attacks on Trump's blatantly anti-Democratic just seemed to lack real audacity, passion, and authenticity like a Cadillac-driving Volkswagen salesman. As that old line about salesman goes, she had to sell herself before she could sell her message, and that was an impossibility to Trump sympathizers; and NOT because of her race or that Trumpist's are racists/sexists. The Democratic elite don’t get it now and probably never will.
From Yascha Mounk's ancestry, it must be depressing to see America becoming what the Weimar republic became " a republic without republicans, a democracy without democrats". It is to see our democracy irrevocably ebbing because its leadership class, like Oswald Spengler characterized the Weimar republic, had, "no (genuine at least) audacity, no passions, no lasting message, and produced no great men (or women)". They just seem a class of policy wonks glibly deferring to their campaign wonks, baffled as to why their campaign wonks' prescriptions no longer work.
Yascha, with respect, your readers are traumatized today, and will continue to be so for several weeks. I know you mean well, but this is not the time for a quick and brief academic analysis containing tropes we all heard and said in 2016. We certainly do not need the “long hard look in the mirror” comment, and deserve better from all of academia than we have seen over the past eight years. It is time for the lawyers (myself included) and judiciary to get to work protecting our constitution. But we would love your help. j.f.
As you do your urgent work, and thank you for it, keep in mind that you’re reading Persuasion, not a Democrat platform. Sometimes the best time to assess is the moment of failure, if done honestly. Socrates did just that after the crushing loss to Sparta, and what resulted was a flourishing of historic importance.
David, this is a fair criticism of my post. I was upset and not very clear. My concern wasn’t over which party won the election — I am an independent. It was, and still is, based on the expectation that our president elect sees our citizens and his political opposition, including the press, as his enemies. He wants to dismantle a democracy that, while far from perfect, has held us together for over two centuries, even through civil war. My view is that you don’t fix something by destroying it and replacing it with an autocracy. He also may be setting the groundwork for incapacitating our northern and southern neighbors. The collective implications of this approach are outside of my comprehension, it’s like swallowing a bowling ball, but they aren’t subtle or nuanced. We should prepare for the collapse of small business, high unemployment, and ballooning tent cities. It’s a shameful situation.
As an old white guy of nearly 80 who once was a merchant seaman, construction worker, Army NCO (all seems in another lifetime now), and who taught American history for over 40 years afterwards I can’t help but wonder if the fundamental problem is that far too many of us just don’t understand what this nation was designed to be. How many of us and how many of our kids are actually given a thorough grounding in the Constitution, so how can we expect ourselves to know what this country is and what it isn’t. Our professional politicians, who ought to be among the ones doing that clearly don’t. Our schools often seem to concentrate on all sorts of issues, but how many of them have teachers who could actually make such lessons possible or make it necessary and possible for their students to learn them.
But then how many of us, given the opportunity, would sit in front of their TV’s or computers and listen to the kind of thorough examination of any aspect of our political that, say, those who stood outside for hours listening to the Lincoln Douglas debates over what was then one of the crucial issues facing us. How many such debates does our political class provide about the issues facing us today, even if we could guarantee they would be more than just unchecked oppositional sound machines.
The other fundamental problem of more recent vintage, is that we have signally failed to teach both our kids and ourselves more about the complexity and interconnectedness of the world we now inhabit. Our vision of it seems to be a compendium of facts, distortions, half truths, lies, and sound bites of various veracity all of which tend to lead to the kind of simplistic understanding that leads so many of us to seek the equally unverified and simplistic answers provided by demagogues like Trump.
The Canadian folk singer Eileen McGann once penned and recorded a whimsical little ditty called I Think We’re Just Too Stupid for Democracy. I have to say that she may be on to something, although I’d be inclined to switch Under-educated for Stupid.
Thank you for a fantastic article - though I might add that while it's the Democrats who are (rightfully) taking the blame for this avoidable catastrophe, the movement/tendency/perspective under discussion is primarily a cultural rather than a political phenomenon, with which the Democratic Party as an institution is ultimately not synonymous. In other words, I think the party itself is salvageable. But they can still be justifiably held to account for allowing themselves to become associated with these people, in much the same way that the GOP can be held to account for allowing itself to become associated with white supremacists even if (obviously, after last night) the party is not itself accurately understood as a white supremacist institution.
Why did Trump win? Because the dominant elites were wedded to a woke ideology that Americans can't (and won't) accept. Let me use one example:
Just before the election Glenn Kessler gave Donald Trump 4 Pinocchio’s for claiming that Imane Khelif was/is a man. So much for fact checking. How about runaway media/elite bias? In real life, D. Trump was right and G. Kessler was wrong. The French endocrinologists who examined Imane Khelif found that he was/is male. The Bicetre hospital report leaked.
IMO the most insightful observation in this essay, on a topic hardly any of the post-election commentating has wanted to touch on, the issue of democracy as a campaign issue.
"And yet, it is time to admit that, in purely electoral terms, the argument that democracy is on the ballot simply does not seem to work. The reason for that is not just that people care more about pocketbook issues like inflation or that incumbents have in general had a bad run of late. It’s that they don’t trust Democrats on the issue of democracy much more than they do Republicans. According to one exit poll in Pennsylvania, three out of four voters in the state believe that democracy in the United States is threatened; among those who do, it was Trump, not Harris, who had the edge. "
Pretty clearly these voters did not really think that Trumpism is an avenue to save democracy. Trump's whole campaign modus operandi seemingly was to double down on his anti-democratic themes, and this tactic seemed to have won, not lost electoral support. Rather they have given up on Democracy completely, or at least couldn't fathom the idea Kamala as a savior of our Democracy.
An attitude actually not as farfetched as it sounds, at least to those following Yascha Mounk's deconstruction of Democratic Party identitarion politics. A look at Kamala Harris's entire bio shows her as the quintessential multicultural personna, from her Berkeley roots through her education to her career to her veep selection. Her trying to defend modern western/American democracy has the funny feel of hearing a Pope argue why he isn't really Catholic.
That's what I heard in the debate and rest of the campaign. Her attacks on Trump's blatantly anti-Democratic just seemed to lack real audacity, passion, and authenticity like a Cadillac-driving Volkswagen salesman. As that old line about salesman goes, she had to sell herself before she could sell her message, and that was an impossibility to Trump sympathizers; and NOT because of her race or that Trumpist's are racists/sexists. The Democratic elite don’t get it now and probably never will.
From Yascha Mounk's ancestry, it must be depressing to see America becoming what the Weimar republic became " a republic without republicans, a democracy without democrats". It is to see our democracy irrevocably ebbing because its leadership class, like Oswald Spengler characterized the Weimar republic, had, "no (genuine at least) audacity, no passions, no lasting message, and produced no great men (or women)". They just seem a class of policy wonks glibly deferring to their campaign wonks, baffled as to why their campaign wonks' prescriptions no longer work.
Excellent analysis.
Yascha, with respect, your readers are traumatized today, and will continue to be so for several weeks. I know you mean well, but this is not the time for a quick and brief academic analysis containing tropes we all heard and said in 2016. We certainly do not need the “long hard look in the mirror” comment, and deserve better from all of academia than we have seen over the past eight years. It is time for the lawyers (myself included) and judiciary to get to work protecting our constitution. But we would love your help. j.f.
Some people will use any excuse to avoid looking in the mirror. Sadly, they are the ones who most need to look in the mirror.
As you do your urgent work, and thank you for it, keep in mind that you’re reading Persuasion, not a Democrat platform. Sometimes the best time to assess is the moment of failure, if done honestly. Socrates did just that after the crushing loss to Sparta, and what resulted was a flourishing of historic importance.
David, this is a fair criticism of my post. I was upset and not very clear. My concern wasn’t over which party won the election — I am an independent. It was, and still is, based on the expectation that our president elect sees our citizens and his political opposition, including the press, as his enemies. He wants to dismantle a democracy that, while far from perfect, has held us together for over two centuries, even through civil war. My view is that you don’t fix something by destroying it and replacing it with an autocracy. He also may be setting the groundwork for incapacitating our northern and southern neighbors. The collective implications of this approach are outside of my comprehension, it’s like swallowing a bowling ball, but they aren’t subtle or nuanced. We should prepare for the collapse of small business, high unemployment, and ballooning tent cities. It’s a shameful situation.