Looking for salvation in all the wrong places....

Democratic institutions today, including government, are a legacy of the industrial age, when it was believed that “science” and “rationality” in the hands of “experts” could cure the human condition, if enough power was applied.  Salvation came from the top down, as if by divine grace.  Presidents were expected to speak with Olympian authority.  Every crisis was a “problem” to be solved, almost mathematically, by specialists deciphering the data.

The credibility of this model of organizing society has been destroyed by the digital age.  There’s just too much information available.  We know every falsehood, error, and failure of judgment that presidents and governments are responsible for.  The public was promised salvation but is now condemned to elect persons with few divine attributes.  So it is angry.  The public was angry long before the pandemic.

-from this post by the ever-wise Martin Gurri