Benevolent Dictation

The separation of powers, which ensures that no single part of the government can ever achieve unified control of the policymaking process, has been a blessing and a curse. It prevents tyranny but creates veto points for politicians who, for whatever reason, wish to stop federal solutions to long-term challenges.
Julian E. Zelizer "Why the U.S. Can’t Solve Big Problems"

Everyone loves "democracy." Until they can't wrangle the votes to prevail. Mr. Zelizer strikes me as yet another in a long line of people who are complaining about the fact that representative government was not designed to make the world safe for partisan (in this case Progressive) ideals of enlightenment; but to allow various stakeholder groups to have some say in the decisions that are going to determine the course of their lives.

I am of the understanding that Mr. Zelizer's "politicians who, for whatever reason, wish to stop federal solutions to long-term challenges" are a figment of the imagination. Instead what we have are politicians who have been duly elected (even if the electoral system is less than perfectly representative) to speak for the interests of people who have a different understanding of the long-term challenges that need solutions. People can, and will, argue over whether those different understandings are good-faith or fraudulent. That argument, however, often creates problems of its own, as people decide that their positions are so self-evidently correct that principled opposition to them is a contradiction in terms.

Regardless of someone's confidence in "the right answer," no matter how much of a consensus there is among particular groups, that answer does not have a right to either be or influence policy. The purpose of representative government is not to align policy with scientific or philosophical truth. It's to align policy with what people understand is good for them. In this sense, the anti-intellectualism that Mr. Zelizer complains about is also a feature, not a bug, as an expert class that imposes on the public what they feel is best for everyone involved is functionally little different from well-meaning royals and aristocrats doing them same.

And in this "grassroots activism" is not a solution to some sort of particular problem with the United States government. Rather it's way things were intended to work. Citizens should be talking to each other and making the point, "This is why this is good for you; and I will see to it that it is," rather than simply demanding asymmetrical sacrifice or indulging in revanchism. For all that people complain that Liberal disdain was the reason why Donald Trump was elected, I stand by the understanding that during the Obama Administration, Democrats, convinced that what's right need not explain itself, failed to say to their more Conservative friends and neighbors: "Look, I know that you're concerned about this, but I will take it upon myself to ensure that Washington makes this work for you." And Republican voters now, convinced that Truth is finally prevailing are ignoring the concerns of their more Liberal acquaintances in the same way. If "grassroots activism" is allowed to simply become a description of getting the choir to go to the polls, it's going to exacerbate the problem rather than mitigate it. Instead, the grass roots need to be speaking to people who are not always like them, and looking to ensure that the policies they are pursuing help those people in a way that those people understand they need help. This isn't always going to be simply doing as they are told, but in finding solutions to the underlying problems.

To take one of Mr. Zelizer's examples, slavery, I'm uncertain that the South was simply so enamored of slavekeeping that it had become an end in itself. Rather, it was a means, and while historical counterfactuals are never anything more than speculation, one can imagine that a solution that both freed the slaves and maintained the South's economic standing would have allowed the United States to have the cake of abolition and eat it in peace.

Of course, such a deal would have required a level of trust, and that's usually the missing link. I speak fairly often with a Conservative high-school classmate of mine, and he is convinced that American Liberalism has, as an end, stealing from the rich to allow the poor to get high and play video games. Our discussions are often slogs, not because of acrimony, but because he suspects that any position to the left of his own of bad faith, and I spend a lot of my time carefully laying out the logic that underpins my positions to counter the talking points he falls back on. This is not to say that he's a bad person, or "brainwashed," but that he expects dishonesty to go hand-in-hand with disagreement, and it's only the fact that we've known each other since we were in the fifth grade, and I show genuine concern for him, that he gives me the time of day. And genuine trust across party lines takes that level of connection, and that level of work. Pat accusations of bad faith undermine that.