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

by Martin Gurri

At least the president is held accountable for his 2,000 falsehoods. The elites dwell in their own fragment of truth yet seem blissfully unaware. They tell us Trump is Hitler. They explain that their defeat is a conspiracy of lies. They insist that the world can be returned to what it was before November 2016. Most damaging, they are as willing as Trump to demolish the historical reality of their own institutions. An acting attorney general can refuse to implement a presidential executive order, for example. The head of a consumer agency can deny the chief executive’s authority to appoint her successor. A minor foreign service official can resign with a very public letter directing the secretary of state to “stop the bleeding” or “follow me out the door.”110