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The first public opinion poll of the new year serves us up a mess of conflicting opinions, suggesting that the right has grown much weaker and at the same time is as strong as ever, that PM Netanyahu’s career is toast and also that it is as inevitable as a Shabbat challah, and more.
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This is a segment from The “For the Sins We Have Sinned” Edition.
I have come to the view that democracy runs on middle level and lower elites; these are the ones that inform and channel (including quashing) opinion, the ones the upper echelons need to partially satisfy for stability’s sake. What seems to be happening throughout developed countries (and, given the expansion of internet access via Wi-Fi, perhaps mildly elsewhere as well) is that these lower elites are eroding, leaving a populace ready for mob like decision at the polls but otherwise apathetic. What control there is seems to be by media gurus with core followings, providing seeds for later condensation of opinion without much reasoning. If this view is somewhat true, present democracies are not at all like those originally evolved in the 1800s through say 1990. “Democracy” can no longer be a generic word over time, if it ever was.
This new democracy requires constant agitation to engage the populace. Israel has natural agitation in terror events and national defense. Trump has moved to calling for the firing of NFL players to keep agitation running. The key is to control focus. This was always true, but the middling elites that did so, creating coherent world views, are gone. Now democracy is being identified by the poll in both senses of the word. Opinion of the moment is reality, and long term trust in representatives, the definition of a republic, is gone. Most of us want to be told what to do; it’s easier, apparently safer. With representatives no longer trusted, all that’s left is sniffing the air of quick opinion. Employers used to provide (not always good) opinion formation, but the anonymous fast changing job seems to be changing that (so higher Republican elites had no traction against the untethered Trump voter via employer opinion). Rather than saying “Madam X I believe in, even if sometimes wrong,” we ask what do you believe of the moment and how many will agree. In consequence, we are inherently afraid of one another, fearful of getting the trend wrong. We are all told to think for ourselves, but really don’t want to. We want to find a crowd to go along and get along, which has always been so. That’s our true evolution, I think.
If we need many small people to move forward in a sustained way, what do we do when all we can make are a few big people? I don’t know.
Noah PLEASE let the others speak. Stop steam rollong.