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

by Martin Gurri

High modernism suited the hierarchies of the industrial age. In politics, this was true for dictators and elected presidents, left and right. The appeal was structural. Everything cascaded from the top down. Only the elites possessed the technical and scientific training to rationalize society. The public at that time was still considered a formless mass—carrier of the imperfections which it was the ambition of government to eliminate forever. 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. If they were ruthless in their means—these included, at different times, forced relocation, intrusive surveillance, even incarceration and death—it was because they believed, with an unwavering conviction, in the justice of their cause.