As information becomes abundant, he writes, “the regime accumulates pain points.” By this he means that problems like police brutality, economic mismanagement, foreign policy failures and botched responses to disasters “can no longer be concealed or explained away.” Instead, “they are seized on by the newly empowered public, and placed front and center in open discussions. In essence, government failure now sets the agenda.”
She says that Gurri’s thinking is that notwithstanding their greater awareness of failure, people are expecting more from government and other organizations.
In my mind, I keep going back and forth between seeing our political sectarianism as unprecedented on the one hand and seeing it as a replay of 1968 on the other. In the 1968 election, the public, preferring a representative of the existing order against the forces of rebellion, ultimately turned to a familiar face, even though he was widely disliked and viewed as unscrupulous. Thus, although right now I do not know a single person who is positively disposed toward Hillary Clinton (and almost all of my friends are Democrats!), it is conceivable that she will win a landslide.
Read Postrel’s whole essay. I will put Gurri’s book on my list of items to read. And is Martin any relation to Adam?
Yup! He’s my father.
Under democratic processes (they are processes, not conditions) the various active delegations (and passive acceptances) of authority require conceptions (and assumptions) of accreditations of those delegated – particularly those delegated with powers.
The bases for accreditations crumble as information about them is disseminated to the active and passive (especially the latter) delegating members of the public.
Nevertheless, the broad (if diverse) spectra of the public show no desire to undertake the performance of the obligations that give rise to those delegations. Individuals in the disordered communities will not take up arms, where necessary, against their own armed, predatory and murderous young people. Those tasks are delegated. Less extreme and more commercial or “social” issues provide similar examples of the preference (insistence?) on delegation of the performance of obligations to maintain order and provide predictability.
So, look to the bases for “accreditations.” Are they accepted mainly for relief from obligations; or by some determinable qualifications (which must be conditional)? The latter seems to be becoming less common.
A young person told me that practically every normal person at his very liberal college supports Bernie Sanders. The only Hillary Clinton enthusiasts are white gay men.
“every normal person at his very liberal college”
FAIL
I have said before that the problem today is that we can’t even agree on what the facts are, much less what to do about them. Social media just fuels that phenomenon. The real problem with social media is that it reinforces knee jerk emotionalism, not rational thought. I am constantly amazed at how quickly social media fueled firestorms can develop over stories that I was totally unaware of. Emotion fuels the fire.
The facts are often shaded to fit the desired (or just most emotionally and psychologically motivating) narrative and then the next story comes along before the damage can be repaired.
Examples are people never understood Trayvon Martin died to justifiable self-defense and I bet people actually think Ben Carson lied about getting a scholarship to West Point.
So if it keeps working they will keep doing it.
What’s also interesting is how narrative fuels social media, and vice versa: http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/how-stories-deceive
I have a friend who likes Hillary, and regrets that the Democrats nominated Obama instead of her in 2008. This friend of mine is a lawyer who practices high-value personal injury law on the plaintiff’s side. She has friends and colleagues in the Democratic establishment in her city. I assume that many similarly situated people like Hillary.