Standing Apart

"Russia’s Secret Weapon? America’s Idiocracy" on The Daily Beast is not a bad article, but it's hobbled by a nasty headline designed to project to readers that their supposed ability to see, and to see through, alleged Russian disinformation makes them smarter than the knuckle-dragging rubes who fell for it. No one who proclaims an idiocracy believes themselves to be a part of it, and that sneering attitude is likely to mean that this piece receives less attention that it might.

While the piece ends with some insightful commentary, the article gets off to a weak start, mainly because Michael Weiss is busy being critical. For example, the invocation of "pathology" is likely misplaced. Where Mr. Weiss notes that: "What the Russian security services have deftly done, and will continue to do, is tap into pre-existing pathologies in our society and encourage them, as an enabler might do to a drug addict or alcoholic," I would have substituted in "grievances," and left off the "enabler" bit, which I thing, again, allows the reader to elevate themselves above the nameless Americans that Mr. Weiss comes across as talking down about. Just as drug addiction or alcoholism are seen as character flaws, this wording allows the reader to view those "fooled by that bull[…]" as flawed, and thus susceptible in a way that the reader themselves (being smart, discerning and knowledgeable, of course) is not.

Likewise describing our overall society as "disunified" rather than "falling apart" would likely have been more constructive. A nation of 300+ million people spread over the width of an entire continent (and them some) will have a panoply of different interests, and some of those interests will be at cross-purposes to others. It's always been this way, and to say that the nation is now "falling apart" implies a greater level of unity in the past, which strikes me as something of a fantasy.

The problem that we have now is not one of stupidity, but that Representative Democracy (like any form of government) doesn't live up to the hype. For people to support it, it has to meet their needs as they understand them. "[A]n unemployed coal miner in Lackawanna" becomes "wary of immigrants and the 'mainstream media'" because they feel that these are groups that work against the former miner's legitimate interests, and the miner distrusts government to the degree that they perceive it as siding with immigrants and the “mainstream media” to his direct harm.

The fact that some number of people understand "Democracy" (however they define it) as being the objectively best form of government doesn't mean that such an understanding IS objective. Nor does it grant Democracy some special right to exist. Like any innovation, it has to serve the needs of some percentage of the population, or become obsolete. Noting external meddling in the process isn't a substitute for actually dealing with it.