Maybe in a few weeks I will have forgotten about Martin Gurri and moved on to something else, but right now I am viewing everything in the newspaper through the lenses he provides in The Revolt of the Public.
One of Gurri’s themes is that elites now make unrealistic promises to the public, and the public soon discovers this, discrediting the elites. So, in today’s WaPo, the lead story is about world leaders denouncing the North Korean test of a hydrogen bomb. The public is going to view this as a government failure. After all, back in the Clinton Administration, they reached a deal with North Korea that was supposed to keep it from going nuclear altogether. The WaPo buries the issue of the Iran deal in a different story, and there the spin is that the Iran deal is a success because Obama paid attention to it while he let North Korea slip his mind. My guess is that this talking point is not going to work with the public.
The second top front-page story is headlined Germany targets a surge in vitriol (the digital version uses different wording but gives the same message). Later down in the story, you read about the New Year’s Eve rampage in Cologne that was “allegedly committed by gangs of young Arab and North African men.” My guess is that the public thinks that the lead story is the rampage, not the vitriol. And the public sees the rampage as evidence of government failure in its promise to absorb immigrants without problems. (Of course, I am over-generalizing when I say “the” public, but you can be sure that I am describing a significant segment of the population.)
UPDATE: A Failure by Germany’s Elite.
Another of Gurri’s themes is that the elites are blindsided by the public. The elites take it for granted that they are competent and that their authority will be respected. When the public revolts, the elites’ first inclination is to go into denial.
If the Iran deal is a success, it can’t be because it is to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. There’s very little reason to believe that it will do that. But presumably every day that Iran is not announcing a successful nuclear test will be declared proof of the deal’s success by Obama and his sycophants.
“And the public sees the rampage as evidence of government failure in its promise to absorb immigrants without problems.” Given that “absorbing the immigrants without problems” – devastating problems involving the degradation of life for most Europeans was never possible – maybe taking in the immigrants in the first place was the mistake.
“The elites take it for granted that they are competent and that their authority will be respected.” Why should the public respect elites who are blatantly hostile to the interests of most of that same public? What is amazing, and disheartening, is that the dissatisfied public, in both Europe and the US, is so passive and inert that it is unable to organize itself to replace the corrupt elites with something better, and instead just vents through support for clowns like Trump (who, in the unlikely event he becomes president, is going to turn out to be merely a more colorful establishment hack). The public is like a dog kept in by a fence that it could jump over, if it only realized that it could.
In the case of Europe, it’s kind of fun to watch them flounder at who is the oppressor and who is oppressed- except that women get raped and kids get molested. But hey, they aren’t us and not our kids.
In the case of nukes, we should hope mutually assured destruction doesn’t break down. If it does, our response will need to be distributed government. Until then, the strategy should be to maintain M.A.D. Perhaps this should include varying techniques at reminding dictators that the likely first target of rogue nukes would be their own capitals.
Who is more discredited though, elites or a naive public that calls these realistic promises? Politics doesn’t encourage nuance but whose fault is that?
When the politicians are lying, it is politicians to blame. One of the few questions is whether politicians are lied to by their underlings and they blindly accept the public naivete as positive reinforcement.
Akso, if we observe revolt that is a kind of revealed preference. The mutual delusion is breaking down. For example, blacks and libertarianis and some liberals didn’t suddenly start thinking black lives matter. What happened is moderate white soccer moms are finding it harder to view cops as white knights in light of cell phone videos.
I have read the two AK pieces and the Postrel piece also. Not the book. Interesting stuff – all a bit dark and depressing it would seem.
And yet, I find myself feeling strangely optimistic – dare I say even mildly euphoric. Perhaps because I had come to some of these conclusions myself, and am egotistically patting-myself-on-the-back at how clever and astute I am. Or perhaps its because I’m some kind of small-state Libertarian and think that this is all very much in the right direction – away from Big Government say.
But perhaps its mostly because I believe that the Government simply doesn’t enjoy anything like the scrutiny and discipline, and accountability, that they should. That they should do their damn job first before demanding more control, authority and power…and money. And yes, I am casting my net wide enough to capture the supporters of more Government as well. Perhaps they should expect to be asked those questions too. Perhaps voters and supporters should feel that accountability as well.
As societies break down you tend to get more government, not less. Anarcho-Tyranny becomes the law of the land.
I spent a long time in an industry where it becomes apparent pretty quickly that “expert” does NOT mean somebody who knows what will work, but rather, somebody who knows lots of issues to overcome before it can work. NOT somebody who knows answers, but somebody who knows questions.
And of course a very real problem for people trying to gain or keep power/prestige/their job in government is that over long stretches, the status quo is about as good as it is possible to get. It’s hard to win the presidency by promising “we won’t screw up anything that works”, but the likely reality is that’s about the best you can do.
What we might hope for is that over time the public comes to see this (truthfully, not blindly) and stops voting for people who are all but promising to repeal thermodynamics or institute time travel.
Footnote: Obama is many things, but a forgetful fool is not one of them. It is simply not credible that he has “forgotten” about North Korea. Unable to find any mechanism to restrain their behavoir? Sure. Perhaps have found the practical limit of what can be done and think he’s done that, now like any human wants credit for it? Sure. But simply forgot? After the CIA tells him about it every morning? No.
Would YOU forget? Would I? No.
You’re half right. Obama has not “forgotten” about North Korea. But neither has he found some sort “practical limit” to what can be done about nuclear proliferation. He’s just not interested in the issue.
In Obama’s defense, I would acknowledge that, given the string of failures of the Clinton and Bush II administrations in dealing with North Korea, how to address with that regime’s nuclearization without triggering the immolation of South Korea is an exceedingly difficult puzzle. But the ongoing Iran disaster is principally of Obama’s own making. Unless, perhaps, you really believe that their theocratic dictator really wrote a “fatwa” against nuclear weapons, which for some reason no one can find anywhere. In which case, I guess there was never any problem to begin with, and we can all go back to sleep while the mullahs “solve” all our problems in the Middle East for us.
An interesting take on a related theme from the always readable Dan Hannan:
http://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2016/01/daniel-hannan-has-the-rise-of-trump-proved-me-wrong-on-open-primaries.html
I will bite on this one:
1) Most of the public don’t care about some small nation governed by a second-generation loon and I would say the NK failure belongs with China since they are protecting NK from the west. Anyway, NK threatens mostly SK and not much US strategic interest.
2) Yes, it was a failure of Merkel not to work the assimilation of Middle Eastern refugees. It still might have been the right policy in the long run (as it saved lots of lives here) but not implemented correct. If you a true open border libertarian, then this is not good story for assimilation.
I don’t think open border libertarians argue for assimilation. But I also don’t understand why open borders isn’t always bundled with better foreign policy, voting rights embargo, immigrant bonding and sponsorship, etc.