Strangelove 2024
Consider not what’s wrong with America, but what’s right.
What’s the matter with American society? When I considered this question, posed in a comment on a blog I follow, the answer seemed obvious. The matter is a society that fails to give people the information and the education they need to make sound decisions about what information to trust, in short, information integrity. What society does give them is an economy full of obstacles and dead ends. It also gives them a culture of hate for the people who they see as benefitting from the system. And, it gives them a movement where they can act-out that hate and then watch it on the television.
These Americans have given up on the government. They’ve given up on the courts. They’ve given up on the press. They’ve given up on the universities and the scientists. Somehow, a generation of American leaders have become blind to the frustration of these Americans. But we all have something in common: we haven’t given up on the right to choose this country’s future. Trump and his campaign designers seem to understand these people, but they’ve mystified a generation of establishment political leaders and activists, leaders so blinded by their idealism and so preoccupied with their own virtue and self-worth that they can’t comprehend the real-politique of most of America’s working, voting class.
Many of us are also confused about the Second Amendment. We’ve forgotten why America’sAmerica’s founders put it in the Constitution. It wasn’t for hunting, self-defense or entertainment. It was there to maintain the people’s right to challenge and even destroy a government they disagree with. In an age of nuclear bombs and chemical weapons, the right to bear arms seems antiquated. Regardless of where we draw the line for what arms a person may bear, we ought not forget why the Second Amendment is in the Constitution.
This suggests an ironic upside to the Trump victory. In an earlier time, a frustrated public did not have the vote as an outlet. Instead they expressed themselves with violence. Perhaps this election spared us the messiness of destroying our society and government with violence. Instead, we can watch with pleasure or horror as President-elect Trump tries to deconstruct our government and society politically. We see him starting with his cabinet nominations. Some voters are hoping for a kind of revolution, but history teaches a different lesson. And when history’s lessons are forgotten, we’re back to information integrity.
