The Unexamined Privilege . . .
Is it worth it?
In his NTYs newsletter, The Tilt, (which I believe has a pay wall) the political analyst and pollster, Nate Cohn, reported on some very interesting new polling that should give us all pause to do some reflecting on the political challenges we face.
When asked what are the biggest threats to democracy, something close to 70% of registered voters cite something like, “Government mainly works to benefit powerful elites rather than ordinary people.” Only 4% said that Trump and election denial were the #1 threat.
It’s not simply that democracy is messy. It’s that tens of million of Americans, mostly working class, I suspect, feel that democracy, or whatever our currrent system is, is not working for them and is, “becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.”
Trump does not necessarily represent “autocracy in opposition to democracy” to these millions, so much as someone who speaks directly to their fears and resentment in a way that no one has in a generation or more. These millions understand “messy” and don’t expect Trump and allies/clones to do everything right. They just believe that Trump, et al are confronting the elites, and the elite consensus, who/which have captured and inured to themselves the largest benefits of our “democratic” institutions and systems.
Meanwhile, rather than directly addressing ourselves to working class disillusionment and need for real champions and very urgent and clearly articulated and targeted responses, we elites just plod along engaging in conventional political “trust us, we’ve got a plan” mode (which these tens of millions have totally lost trust in), bemoaning the nasty polarization, and blaming Trump-The-Symptom for our own massive failures to govern responsibly and for being the primary carriers and spreaders of the underlying “wasting” disease.
Socrates is reported to have said, The unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, here we are where tens of millions have examined their lives and are reporting that, effectively, life sucks. It is far past time for the rest of us, the privileged, to examine our own lives and decide whether, “The unexamined life of privilege is worth the loss of democracy.”