America: Not Democracy, But Jerkocracy
Since the last presidential election in the United States, many have been wringing their hands at the threat the Trump presidency holds over democracy. The lack of respect for norms of behavior ethically and legally and strong tendencies to authoritarian rule are perceived as an existential threat. Add to this many natural disasters, threats of nuclear attack by North Korea, and ongoing struggles with terrorism and it is easy to think the present age is as terrifying as it gets.
That is, of course, a common misperception. The present can be frightening, but it is easy to lose perspective because things have honestly and factually rarely been better, with the exception of the near completion of the change, via the election, to a pathologic form of leadership that moves America more fully from a representative democracy to what I call a Jerkocracy. The greatest existential threat to the United States, and by definition to the world at large, as U.S. influence and actions affect nearly everyone, is the vast majority of people seeking elected leadership positions at all levels of the U.S. government are jerks. There is perhaps no greater jerk than Donald J. Trump, but there are a staggering number of people challenging his supremacy (the Republican candidate for the open Senate seat in Alabama, Roy Moore, may actually be worse).
“Jerk” can mean many things; it is even a verb. For the sake of my argument, I will define it two ways: first as persons who are absolutely sure of themselves and their ideology, unyielding to opposing views (even those backed by incontrovertible data and facts), and who will defend themselves relentlessly. For them, ideology is more important than anything (but that ideology may include the concepts of national and political party superiority) except their limitless self-regard, and they will never admit they are wrong. There is a second kind of jerk that is less common, overall, and these are the persons who seek to obtain maximum publicity and power, but don’t care all that much what they do with it as long as they keep it for as long as possible. Trump is clearly the latter, Roy Moore the former, and Ted Cruz both (though more the former). These people, who comprise every elected Republican (yes, there are Democratic jerks, but they do not possess the defined qualities in such obvious ways) except perhaps one or two of the female senators, cannot govern. They cannot get along unless they are united against a universal foe, usually someone far better at life than they are whom they would like to tear down (Obama was a dream come true: a somewhat progressive black man – incredibly easy for them all to hate. Similar for Hillary, a progressive woman with good ideas). They thrive on keeping things from getting done or changing, not on getting things done or making progress, with the exception of making sure their rich donors get more than their share of government funds (and they get rich themselves). Once they get power, they will never relinquish it and will do anything, absolutely anything, to keep it, deploying levels of hypocrisy, self-delusion, and cognitive dissonance difficult for normal people to comprehend.
What remains to be seen is whether the tide can be turned. We’ve seen a mobilization of feminine political power since November of 2016, but is that enough? Reasonable people need to take back the government and put in place election reforms like public funding for campaigns and at least some level of nonpartisan psychologic or psychiatric scrutiny of potential candidates to keep the psychopaths and double high authoritarians who aspire to power away from it. At some point we will need to overhaul the constitution, either with several amendments or maybe a full rewrite, to bring it up to 21st century standards of human rights and decency and remove the vagueness that allows jerks to push the rest of the world around.