JANUARY 18, 2020 – I worry that we’re living in a post-democracy; that we’ve gone from democracy to dumbocracy—and are now headed for doomocracy.
As I observe the disorganized crime boss in the White House and the psychological extortion scheme by which the crime boss controls the Republican Party; as I see how Big Data, algorithms, A.I. and Facebook, Google, and Twitter platforms have fundamentally altered “free speech” and opened the floodgates of misinformation . . . I see worrisome signs that our country sits astride colliding tectonic plates. With each news cycle, pressure builds. Much longer this way, America will suffer seismic consequences.
How do we avoid the earthquake? How do we return to the “norms” that kept us away from the subduction zone?
I worry about the very survival of our operating system—the Constitution—when U.S. Senate Majority Leader McConnell says cynically, “I’ll take direction from [the executive branch]. I will not be an impartial juror” and then takes an oath shamelessly to be an impartial juror in Trump’s impeachment trial. I worry more that Trump, a president openly contemptuous of every notion, ideal, and principle of a just, civil, democratic society—with over a third of the country cheering him for being so—will be re-elected in November. Nothing afterward will restrain him or his hitmen. Now a crime boss, he’ll then anoint himself as absolute monarch. I’ll worry even more if he’s not re-elected. I can hear him and his sycophants yelling “fake news,” “hoax,” “witch hunt,” “voter fraud,” “Ukrainian hackers!” Who then will remove him from the White House on Inauguration Day?
I don’t see Republicans coming to their senses, and I don’t see Democrats uniting and organizing effectively or overcoming voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the electoral college. Big Tech won’t change its business model—algorithm-based advertising—nor will Big Tech police themselves or abusers of their platforms. Government (Congress, the executive branch, the courts), meanwhile, is far from developing, implementing and enforcing a coordinated regulatory regime consistent with our long-standing democratic operating principles. In fact, I’m not sure that our long-standing democratic operating principles can provide sufficient guidance in this Brave New World of ours.
Meanwhile, we the people—the foundation of democracy (“demos” in Greek means “people”; “cracy” is “power”)—have been “dumbed down” by attention spans no longer than the time it takes our thumbs to scroll a newsfeed down a hand-held screen. Moreover, each of us is influenced by a different set of data points, rendering us into the D.SA.—Disunited States of America.
So here now is our dumbocracy: a crime family running the executive branch with extorted accomplices in the U.S. Senate; the divisive power of algorithmic social media platforms; a divided society drunk silly on bits and bytes of misinformation and no patience for informed discourse.
Karl Marx was right by the wrong analysis: capitalism, as it turns out, does contain the seeds of its own destruction. By November, I fear, our destructive seeds could turn our dumbocracy into a full blown doomocracy.
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© 2020 Eric Nilsson
