The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

by Martin Gurri

coming out of World War II, and standing deep in the heart of darkness of the Cold War, the media and the public felt they were on the same side as the president—that his successes and failures were theirs as well. Such loyalty to an institution today would be considered corrupt or motivated by false consciousness.

The emergence of the Tea Party movement in 2009 anticipated many of the patterns followed by the insurgent groups of 2011.

Geographically as well as by temperament, these were Border types, people from nowhere constituted into hundreds of local networks, interacting by means of digital platforms

This was a revolt against the Center, viewed as tyrannical and self-seeking.

Beyond a fundamentalist respect for the Constitution, any positive proposals inspired either lack of interest or fractious disputes.

The Obama administration, the grandees of the Democratic Party, and even the Republican establishment—all objects of the Tea Party’s uninvited attention—reacted to the uprising with surprise and disbelief.

That the institutions were blind to the situation—that they could not perceive a threat in mere amateurs, and needed to concoct elaborate stories that placed other elites in command of events—did not invalidate the reality of what was taking place.

any hope by the president to assert strong claims of competence from the Center—any idea that he could emulate FDR and LBJ with big programs aimed at big “problems”—had to be abandoned.

Once President Obama’s political agenda had been checkmated, the movement began to lose cohesion and force. It was a revolt of the sectarian Border, motivated by the negation of the Center, and lacked positive proposals around which believers could rally and move forward after that negation had been achieved.

Obama campaign

public in revolt also faced a strategic dilemma: having originated in a political vacuum, it lacked a unifying organization, ideology, program, or plan. The solution, hit upon virtually everywhere that the public has enjoyed political success, was an unrelenting focus on the particular wrong or injustice under assault at the moment.

Negation, digitally amplified, has been the glue holding together a multifarious public.

Tahrir ...

Occup...

Tea Partiers,

when circumstances demanded that they spell out an alternative to the status quo, all three movements faltered and splintered.

Much the same happened to President Obama’s public support.

Once he was elected, any program he espoused was bound to alienate a portion of his base.

The rupture between President Obama and the Tea Party was prefigured by the decline in the legitimacy of the office of the presidency.

The claims of competence made by the government over which Barack Obama presided were as extraordinary and improbable as those asserted in JFK’s time. Everything had been diminished except the talk. The radical disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality of government was apparent to anyone with eyes to see, and, amplified by the information sphere, was itself a major vector for the contagion of distrust.

The claims made by governments today, and possibly even believed by them, were inherited from their predecessors of the industrial age. The same applies to the public’s expectations of government.

The public looks past the feeble figures of their actual rulers to the towering ambitions of the industrial age. These ambitions, I note, were almost never realized, but that doesn’t matter. They were impressive and persuasive, they were articulated at a time when government controlled the means of communication, and they have become, without much thought or discussion, the default setting of democratic politics today.

What James C. Scott has called the twentieth century’s “high modernist” approach to government routinely gambled on colossal projects designed to bring perfection to the social order.

Everything cascaded from the top down. Only the elites possessed the technical and scientific training to rationalize society.

The ruling elites wished to raise this human mass closer to their own higher state of being. Their ambitions were altruistic. Their intentions were pure.

focused on some immediate solution with an almost manic intensity.

construction of Brasilia

in Soviet collectivization

Great Leap Forward.

Cabrini Green,

All of us, public and elites, live under the historic shadow of governments that sought to re-create the human condition. Today, few governments imagine this to be possible or desirable.

But instead of acknowledging that they have awakened from a nightmare of perfectionism, elected governments appear ashamed of their impotence, frustrated by their ineptness. Instead of entering into a new age, political life in democratic countries feels old and late.

late modernism,

Late modernist governments have asserted their claims of competence from the same peak of ambition which launched the high modernist projects. This has placed them in a false and dangerous position. High modernism failed, but it involved governments in actions of monumental proportions, which dazzled elites and public alike by the scope of their objectives. The story told about these projects wasn’t one of failure but of epic activity, high drama, reaching for the stars. It is too late in the day now for such romance: government has lost the will for heroic effort.

The profound disconnect between talk and action gives the game away. The aims of democratic government have shifted, even if the language of politics has yet to catch up. High modernist government was an austere prophet, demanding the destruction of the muddled present to make room for the perfect future. Late modernist government is more like a kindly uncle, passing out chocolate chip cookies to his favorite nieces and nephews. He doesn’t wish to transform them. He just wants them to be happy—most particularly, with him.

If high modernism in power was an engine of perfection, late modernism has become a happiness machine. It feels bound to intervene anywhere it has identified groups that were somehow victimized, disabled, troubled, below average, offended, uncomfortable—actually or potentially unhappy.

Its actions are the political equivalent of handing out a chocolate chip cookie: government today desperately wishes to be seen doing something, anything, to hel...

There are no boundaries to intervention, but no epic outcomes either. Elected officials know perfectly well that the public is on the move, and are terrified of the consequences. Their chief ambition is to persuade us that they feel our pain, are on our side, have given a little money to our favor...

From obesity to climate change, nothing is so personal or so cosmic that it can’t be reckoned a failure of government. If political power has become the guarantor of happiness, then politicians must take the blame for the tragic dimension of human life.

Democracy, as a system, must be held accountable for every imperfection and anxiety afflicting the electorate.

Failure, I repeat, is a function of government claims and public expectations. High modernist governments claimed that they could do anything to achieve perfection. Rhetorically, their present-day heirs have taken on this burden too, to which they have added the claim that they can intervene anywhere to promote happiness. The history of these claims in action can best be described as a humbling collision with reality. Failure has been the rule, and the impact of failure has been to bleed legitimacy away from the democratic process.

high modernist claims exceeded government’s capacity for effective action. Late modernist dithering can be explained more economically by political necessity than by elaborate conspiracy theories. In both cases, failure ensued with apparent inevitability.

Failure has been a function of extravagant promises and great expectations.

At some point around the turn of the new millennium, elites lost control of information, and power arrangements began to flip. Assured of the public’s wrath, elected governments have acted, or failed to act, motivated by a terror of consequences.

“Instead of seeking to achieve political objectives, people seek certain physical and moral qualities,” writes Henri Rosanvallon. “Transparency, rather than truth or the general interest, has become the paramount virtue in an uncertain world.”30 Punished whether they moved forward or back, governments have agonized in an endless loop of failure, real and perceived, at many levels, everywhere.

anti-establishment parties

a politics of pure negation.

Public trust in government during JFK’s time fluctuated between 70 and 80 percent. By 2013, at the start of President Obama’s second term, trust had reached a level worthy of Silvio Berlusconi: 19 percent.

Political life in democratic countries revolves around ambitious intentions and claims of competence which will fail, necessarily, on first contact with reality.

failing companies go out of business and are replaced by new companies, while government accumulates failure, making it, systemically, much more fragile.