2019-12-21 Home Front: Culture Wars
|
Secrets, Not Constitutional Authority, Are Now the Coin of Power in Politics
|
[PJ] - By 2017 it was obvious that the 20th-century institutions were reeling under the impact of the information revolution. The old hierarchies and the authority they had wielded from prestige, authority and celebrity were, if not in a state of collapse, at least badly degraded. The leak of secrets showed how incompetent and mendacious the elites were and the MeToo and Jeffrey Epstein affairs demonstrated how venal.
The last redoubt of establishment legitimacy rested on the claim that it was democratic, protected individual rights against the power of the police; kept the secrets of the ordinary people from any would-be STASI and that the Will of the People as expressed through the ballot box was supreme.
Now, even this last claim has collapsed. For nearly four years both sides of the populist divide have been exerting every effort to convince the publics both foreign and domestic that the executive branch is working for the KGB or that the past administration's stay-behinds in Congress are embarked upon a coup d'etat against the Constitution. The public is watching a double-feature showing the Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, each side depicting the other in the worst possible light.
...As Andy McCarthy put it, "if it can be done to Trump, it can be done to the next president and the next and the next. ... And now, each party’s base will demand that it be done. If each side doesn’t impeach the enemy’s president, it will mean their partisans in the House aren’t trying hard enough."
...The current challenge is less to limit damage to the status quo ante than to find some trajectory that will eventually increase the chances of reaching a new consensus way of routinely changing political leadership. In other words, finding an off-ramp from the highway to hell. The key to achieving this may lie in changing the management of official secrets. The information revolution that made it nearly impossible for individuals to protect their privacy has also made it impossible for authority to be founded on trust.
|
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-12-21 04:09||
||
Front Page|| [14 views ]
Top
|
Posted by Lex 2019-12-21 04:53||
2019-12-21 04:53||
Front Page
Top
|
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-12-21 05:11||
2019-12-21 05:11||
Front Page
Top
|
Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2019-12-21 08:01||
2019-12-21 08:01||
Front Page
Top
|
Posted by magpie 2019-12-21 10:18||
2019-12-21 10:18||
Front Page
Top
|
Posted by JohnQC 2019-12-21 13:27||
2019-12-21 13:27||
Front Page
Top
|
Posted by JohnQC 2019-12-21 14:02||
2019-12-21 14:02||
Front Page
Top
|
|
07:20 M. Murcek
07:17 Penguin_of_the_Desert
07:16 M. Murcek
07:00 Besoeker
06:10 Besoeker
06:09 NN2N1
05:59 Besoeker
05:49 NN2N1
05:49 Frank G
05:38 Richard+Aubrey
05:37 Frank G
05:33 Besoeker
05:30 Grom the Reflective
05:27 Besoeker
04:32 Bobby
02:43 Elmaper+McGurque1612
02:40 Elmaper+McGurque1612
01:38 Grom the Reflective
00:17 EMS Artifact
|