Matt Taibbi: In Response to Trump, Another Dangerous Movement Appears

[portlander23]

In Response to Trump, Another Dangerous Movement Appears
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone (via Common Dreams)

The "too much democracy" train rolls on. Last week's Brexit vote prompted pundits and social media mavens to wonder aloud if allowing dumb people to vote is a good thing. Now, the cover story in The Atlantic magazine features the most aggressive offering yet in an alarming series of intellectual-class jeremiads against the dangers of democracy.

The basic thrust is that shadowy back-room mechanisms, which Rauch absurdly describes as being relics of a lost era, have a positive role and must be brought back. He argues back-room relationships and payoffs at least committed the actors involved to action. Meanwhile, all the transparency and sunshine and access the public is always begging for leads mainly to gridlock and frustration.

Rauch compares "outsiders" and "amateurs" to viruses that get into the body, and describes the institutions that failed to prevent the likes of Trump from being nominated as being like the national immune system. Revolt against party insiders is therefore comparable to "abusing and attacking your own immune system."

Donald Trump is dangerous because as president, he'd likely have little respect for law. But a gang of people whose metaphor for society is "We are the white cells, voters are the disease" is comparably scary in its own banal, less click-generating way.

These self-congratulating congoscenti could have looked at the events of the last year and wondered why people were so angry with them, and what they could do to make government work better for the population.

Instead, their first instinct is to dismiss voter concerns as baseless, neurotic bigotry and to assume that the solution is to give Washington bureaucrats even more leeway to blow off the public. In the absurdist comedy that is American political life, this is the ultimate anti-solution to the unrest of the last year, the mathematically perfect wrong ending.

[Scientific]

1. Oh dear, if only some wise, all-loving corporations would just take control of everything...

...all our problems would be solved...

[840high]

41. .+1

[yallerdawg]

2. Mobocracy does have its drawbacks.

Thousands at 'March for Europe' Brexit protest

[Electric Monk]

3. If you're going to throw around terms like cognoscenti, please try and spell them correctly.

congoscenti http://www.dictionary.com/browse/cognoscenti

Other than that, Matt makes some interesting points and I generally agree with him.

[MADem]

6. I guess the "congoscenti" is Breathing deeply in the Congo, or something? LOL! nt

[malthaussen]

10. Might be a typo, ya never know.

Editing is a lost art these days.

-- Mal

[PJMcK]

28. The lost art

You're so right, malthaussen. Spellcheck chooses wrong words and writers forget to proofread their texts.

Here's an admittedly dumb thing that bugs me. Along with DU, Talking Points Memo is one of my go-to sites for news and commentary and I'll frequently read it on my phone. Josh Marshall runs a terrific website and he and his staff do mostly excellent work. The thing is, they have a feature where their editors write blog postings about news items. On the computer-viewable website, this feature is called "Editors' Blog" while on the portable version it's called "Editors Blog." Both are wrong! If there is one editor who blogs, it should be called "Editor's Blog." If there are multiple editors who blog, it should be "Editors' Blogs."

It's a minor point, of course, but when Mr. Marshall calls himself "Editor and Publisher," it would be nice if he did some editing. It won't stop me from reading TPM but it's an irksome detail.

[freedom fighter jh]

31. It isn't one blog for more than one editor?

That would be "editors' blog."

[PJMcK]

32. Oh, I see what you mean

Okay, that makes sense, freedom fighter jh, so thanks. That hadn't occurred to me as their site isn't really laid out that way. Each posting looks like a separate page. But I still stand by my other example!

[malthaussen]

33. I follow Strunk and White myself,

... so the possessive of "Editors" would be "Editors's." Totally anachronistic, agreed (and marked as incorrect by DU's spell-checker. .

As suggested in the other reply, whether they are Blogs or a single Blog is open to interpretation; since they are of a single publication, though, one would incline towards the singular.

-- Mal

[PJMcK]

34. I love Strunk and White, too

Especially interesting, to me, is the explanations regarding punctuation.

[montana_hazeleyes]

44. DU spell check insists

my cockatiels are cocktails.

[SansACause]

24. I think he meant that.

I think he was referring to third-world country governments.

[merrily]

54. Likelier a typo than a misspelling. However, spell check or a proofreader should

have picked it up.

IMO, dyslexic fingers are a distinct possibility, especially if their owner has at least mild dyslexia, as I do.

[Quantess]

58. CongoScenty might make an awesome air freshener

Tropical flowers

[heresAthingdotcom]

59. should google copy and past......ant then noe typo....

cognoscenti

persons who have superior knowledge and understanding of a particular field, especially in the fine arts, literature, and world of fashion.

Never seen the word used... I learned somethig... useful....today.... a new word....

[Coyotl]

4. Coups by media are becoming the normative means of controlling the world.

If people in the United Kingdom or the USA fail to grasp how the media is influencing how the "idiots" vote and think, they do so at their own peril.

Brazil's President removal by a group of corrupt, criminal politicians was enabled by months of media propaganda. This scenario is playing out in many countries with liberal leaders.

[PatrickforO]

16. Yes the corporate owned media carefully shapes our thoughts around corporate-approved

ideas - ideas that will benefit corporations and raise profits in the long term. If you lift the rock of neoliberal capitalism to look at the squirming, swollen maggots underneath, you see that this corporate intent remains to divide and conquer, generate mistrust, hatred and war, and amass all the world's wealth. This is why the Brexit and Trump movements are so dangerous. The media is giving the absurd ideas of xenophobia, homophobia and racism full play in the hopes that we will all hate one another so much we will forget who is really stealing from us. Fascism is very profitable if it can be contained, they reason.

It is a dangerous line they walk, the squirming, swollen corporate maggots. The last time this was allowed to happen, nurtured by the capitalists, was in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany and Italy. Unfortunately for the capitalists, the fascists then gained so much power they could no longer be contained. The result of this little experiment in boosting profits rendered a Europe in ruins and generated the loss of upwards of 80 million lives.

Will we ever see, do you wonder, what a fucking cancer capitalism actually is?

[Cayenne]

35. media nor corporations favored brexit

The mainstream corporate media was not a cheerleader for Brexit, the alternative non corporate media were.

[bluestateguy]

5. Well, count me in as a member of the congoscenti

There are some people whose stupidity, racism and bigotry should disqualify them from voting.

[seabeckind]

7. Hmm.... n/t

[corkhead]

13. nothing anyone should be concerned about; its only those who disagree with my worldview.

[rpannier]

43. Love your sigline

Makes it easy/easier

Responder: You're not serious are you? (or How can you say that? or whatever)
corkhead: Read my sigline

THE END

[corkhead]

48. Yup, saves me a few keystrokes in this age of perpetual cynicism

[jalan48]

14. Happy 4th of July.

Long live the King!

[AntiBank]

15. authoritarian much?

[PatrickforO]

18. Interesting picture/quote.

'Very much a center left thing...'

The one thing no one is saying, because the media would, of course, quash it immediately, is that it is our own military industrial complex and its ramped up war policies that have caused the refugee problem in the first place. When we invade, destabilize, and overturn governments in a whole region in favor of puppet regimes; when we destroy the infrastructure in whole nations, when we make ruins of entire cities, entire countries, so that millions of people are forced to flee to the very nations that authored the destruction of their lives, how can we EVER be surprised there will be violence and intense friction?

This is particularly true if the oppressed peoples happen to have brown skin.

And the corporate media LOVES IT! Why, the talking heads are simply lapping it up. Why? Because fear is the new 'normal' in the west. This is a condition that has been carefully cultivated among us. If we accept that it is our normal condition to live in fear of shadow enemies, of course we will 'elect' people to office that keep the money flowing to the MIC, which has been the plan all along.

Working pretty good, isn't it? We are SO easy to manipulate!

[AntiBank]

26. our own military industrial complex and its ramped up war policies that have caused the refugee

problem"


Absolutely!!

Libya (whilst not the biggest numbers wise) is THE most glaring example of US/UK/NATO empric wars of destabilization. The rest are horrid too of course.

General Wesley Clark on 9/11, Says Aggression Against Libya & Syria Was Planned Years Ago. (pre Iraq invasion)

[PatrickforO]

21. Another thought on the MIC plan:

This is why a certain politician many of us supported was deliberately quashed. The MIC has no room for true populism because that would diminish their profits. So, instead, they give massive and irresponsible airplay to a certain orange pseudo-populist - a fascist - who has invoked fear, xenophobia, hatred of an entire religion, homophobia, and racism, all under the guise of 'making America great.'

Do you ever wonder what the world will look like in 20 years?

Do you ever wonder if the corporate and media puppets will see their error eventually?

Do you ever wonder when we will cut our puppet strings and organize ourselves around human need rather than human greed?

Or do you think our species is too loathsome to survive and we will engineer our own miserable downfall?

Are we the dinosaurs of modern times?

[spud_demon]

17. OK but who gets to decide? Let's vote on it! nt

[passiveporcupine]

22. perhaps you should learn to spell "cognoscenti"

before you make a statement like that.

[SansACause]

25. I think that was intentional.

A sly reference to third-world governments.

[passiveporcupine]

27. I don't think so.

There is nothing in this thread or in that post to indicate anyone was talking about third world anything.

No, I think they actually meant exactly what they said (and just didn't know it was spelled wrong). Taibbi had it spelled wrong in his article, so they just copied it from that.

[malthaussen]

8. Not just intellectuals.

There are also those who note the fact that the young voted overwhelmingly to stay (when they bothered to vote at all), while their elders voted Leave in direct proportion to their ages. Hence, anyone over 65 should be forbidden to vote, also.

I guess it's all a question of whom you want to purge.

-- Mal

[bbgrunt]

9. Huge k and r. Wake up and smell the mind-f**k!

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. Watch out! Here come the antibodies! nt

[jalan48]

12. We were told in 2008 that certain entities were "too big to fail".

Now we are being told that voting a certain way may cause the system to malfunction. I think it's a scary trend that could lead to a government that just says, "trust us".

[840high]

42. .+1

[chknltl]

19. Democracy requires an enlightened electorate....

so what is wrong with enlightening the electorate? Answer: an out of control econonic model called capitalism requires a dumbed down electorate. IMO, the electorate in a democracy under those circumstances has 2 choices: regain control of it's economic model or allow it's democracy to be taken from it.

[cprise]

23. Who setup that stupid referendum? The electorate or the elites?

Seriously... They worded it so that a SINGLE 51% vote could wipe out the UK's entire relationship with the EU.

It should have required either a supermajority or a second vote a year later.

[elljay]

30. They were arrogant and out-of-touch

so had no clue that the peasants might not see things the same way. Same mistake Taibbi has previously correctly pointed out that the Democratic Party is making. They have decided that the Trump masses are all racists and the Bernie supporters all naive consumers of Republican misinformation. Hopefully they will recognize that neither is true before they make their own Brexit-type mistake.

[temporary311]

20. I wonder if the people defending the Brexit vote

were as staunch in their defense of the Prop 8 vote.

[Drunken Irishman]

29. What should and should not be left up to a democratic vote?

Is it authoritarian to let the courts overrule the will of the people if they vote to ban something? Is it democracy to vote on rights?

Before declaring their independence from Great Britain, should the American colonies held a vote and went with whatever the people voted for?

I think dumb people should be allowed to vote - but I also think there are things that probably shouldn't come up for a vote - things much larger than any campaign, which can be driven by fear and raw emotions...which is exactly why we shouldn't vote to deny people rights.

[underpants]

36. Love Taibbi

[AlbertCat]

37. Instead, their first instinct is to dismiss voter concerns as baseless,

... neurotic bigotry and to assume that the solution is to give Washington bureaucrats even more leeway to blow off the public.

Thus we get to chose the candidate with the 2nd lowest approval rating only because the other candidate has the lowest approval rating.

[bucolic_frolic]

38. The Founders

feared "mob rule", the masses, and setup political mechanisms to filter it in a way.
Electoral college, varying House and Senate terms, originally Senators appointed by
state legislatures. I see it as an attempt to find the wisdom to govern in the long
term best interests of society for the common good. Various Federalist essays are
relevant along these lines.

We've had during Obama's term, the Senate tyranny of the minority when Democrats
controlled, now the tyranny of the majority when they don't. The Democratic Party
primaries work reasonably well, the Republicans are hijacked by anger and bigotry and
racism. When 15 candidates for President run every four years in your primary, you
have a food fight and your party stands for nothing. It doesn't take 15 people to
get a handle on all aspects of political life. Three to about 7 is the most the process
can stand. Democrats narrowed down their agenda from the get go.

You can't have pure mass rule. It means people are hyper-politicized. Spending too much
time on political life. It's like a school board. You elect leaders, you trust their principles,
you let them do their job, you do yours. If you don't like what they do, you vote them out.
We're way past that point. Political agendas are in our workplace, on our bumpers, in our
spending, in courts.

So sorry, Matt Taibbi, you can have too much democracy in my view. It's an ingredient that
leads to demagogues and fascists.

[Craig234]

45. The problem isn't too much democracy

It's corrupted democracy - when money and marketing are the dominant forces in public opinion, which they are today.

And the solution is not less democracy - that leads only to even more corruption, but the fiction of democracy not needed.

What's needed is to get the influence of the powerful limited, which is the entire point of democracy - one person, one vote to replace wealth in an artificial egalitarianism to let the people rule instead of the wealthy.

That means organizing against many current party leaders in both parties, against the mass media, against the propaganda organizations who serve the powerful. Bernie's campaign was that movement; he's still leading it. But it's an uphill battle.

An important part of the battle is to nominate new Supreme Court Justices who will reverse the rulings that empowered the wealthy to dominate the democracy.

We're not even close to restoring our democracy - things are moving toward plutocracy.

And the grip on power by the powerful tightens. They will make it less and less possible for the people to revolt and to restore democracy.

[seabeckind]

50. Resurgence of the feudalistic society.

Nobility doesn't rest until they get their castle back.

Shining city on the hill, my a....

[Fast Walker 52]

51. well said-- the problem is our system has gotten out of whack to benefit the wealthy

far too much.

[seabeckind]

49. Nah, revisionism.

Looking at what happened and drawing an incorrect conclusion.

Eg, electoral college? How about lack of communication and travel difficulties?

Only the people who fear the people don't want them to be able to infringe upon the power of the nobility.

You missed the underlying reason for the American revolution.

Happy Independence Day to you.

[bucolic_frolic]

55. With all due respect

to the American Revolution, its underlying reasons are not a sound
and durable foundation for a stable society, nor would most citizens
choose to live perpetually at war with a foreign occupying army
on the homeland.

And the American Revolution was led by wealthy aristocrats who set
up a system for people like themselves, they believed people of property
and position were the wise leaders for an enduring nation.

So my post is not revisionist at all, I've studied these topics a bit, from
professional scholars. Not that differences of opinion don't abound on
what the framers meant at various points. And I would add that the founders
had no idea that they suffered from lack of communication and travel difficulties
relative to the technologies we have today, or even thought it slow,
they accepted the extant modes of transportation of the day. So in my view, it's you who
are revisionist in giving them foresight they most likely did not possess, they had not even
the knowledge that locomotives would be around by 1830!

[seabeckind]

57. I've found that those who start out

"With all due respect" really don't have any. It's as if they are shocked that another may have a differing opinion in the face of their overwhelming knowledge.

Whether the founders had any inkling of the changes to come in the world of communications and transportation is totally irrelevant. I'm sure they were well aware of the time it took for election results to be tabulated (like in the regions in Georgia) and then transported to Philadelphia in the time in which they lived.

Nice try at the deflection, tho. You get 2 points for effort but still didn't quite make the grade.

As for who set up the government, I believe that the words "All men are created equal" gives a little insight into their point of view. Perhaps they might have disagreed on what a man is but it's the thought that counts. And it was that thought that formed the foundation for our nation.

Then there was the "We, the people". Almost as if they were intending that even the lowliest (free) man would have a say.

Then 85 or so years later the words: "Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." seems to be a reaffirmation.

IOW, perhaps your studies might have yielded a different result with a different instructor who interpreted those professional scholars (who shall remain nameless) writings.

[fasttense]

52. Study after study shows that the majority makes the correct decision when voting.

Numerous studies show that the majority of people will vote correctly 99% of the time IF (and it is a big if) they have accurate information available to them. Hence the stranglehold on media and information by the corporate elite.

Our fonding fathers knew that. That is why they tried to protect the press in the Constitution.

Misinformation leads to misjudgment. It's not that we need less democracy, it's that we need More accurate information.

Saying one thing then doing another is a form of inaccurate information too. So politicians who sound liberal but whose records are conservative and media that does Not point that out are also providing misinformation.

[struggle4progress]

39. This has been a conservative theme since the upheavals of the 1960s

and probably long before then

[bemildred]

46. Yep. Like they have done a good job, and We might fuck it up. It's hilarious.

And kind of obviously bullshit.

[Vote2016]

47. Is "Rauch" the pen name of Debbie Wasserman Schultz? May as well be.

[Fast Walker 52]

53. worth reminding people we live in a democratic republic-- not a pure democracy--

and our system relies on "wise" leaders who are supposed to do the best for, or carry out the will, of the people.

[Overseas]

56. K&R. Well said.

I think the "Third Way" Democrats embody that thinking. They decided we the people were just too dumb to understand all the marvelous benefits of NAFTA and pushed it through. And it was indeed beneficial for the top 5%. And fracking, the "Bridge Fuel," pretending it is Clean Natural Gas, rather than being a large producer of methane, more damaging than CO2... And hey, deregulating finance was important to modernization and we plebes just didn't understand... And we are told to be supportive of our Democratic presidents because they're under attack from the GOP all the time...

Voters in America not only aren't over-empowered, they've for decades now been almost totally disenfranchised, subjects of one of the more brilliant change-suppressing systems ever invented.

We have periodic elections, which leave citizens with the feeling of self-rule. But in reality people are only allowed to choose between candidates carefully screened by wealthy donors. Nobody without a billion dollars and the approval of a half-dozen giant media companies has any chance at high office.

People have no other source of influence. Unions have been crushed. Nobody has any job security. Main Street institutions that once allowed people to walk down the road to sort things out with other human beings have been phased out. In their place now rest distant, unfeeling global bureaucracies.