Madison is Horrified

James Madison in Federalist 57: “The aim of every political constitution is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers men who possess [the] most wisdom to discern, and [the] most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society, since one could hardly expect to luck upon a nation of philosophers.”

America’s current crop of political ‘philosophers’, charged with the common good of a nation of 300+ million citizens, includes tin foil hat crackpots, grifters, fabulists, racists, white suprematists, holocaust deniers, misogynists, insurrectionists and other quantifiable morons. These congressmen and women are serving because that’s who the bulk of the republican base wants to represent them. The leadership is a mirror reflection of the base.

Before you sharpen your pencil to explain to me why democrats are just as bad, let me acknowledge that there are those on the extreme left who are nut jobs to be sure. Their influence, however, doesn’t get much consideration from those in the party who find these woke kooks embarrassing and their numbers in positions of leadership are vanishingly small. The same cannot be said of the current republican party, one that refuses to express dismay and condemnation of the likes of George Santos, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Louie Gohmert, Ron Johnson, et al.

Of course, America, even in the time of Madison, had crackpots and imbeciles, but they were scattered through the population and didn’t have the necessary media tools to bind them together in an incoherent but influential voting block. However, the past three or four decades has seen the proliferation of national disinformation sources which have gelled into a profitable industry. This industry provides propaganda to tens of millions of Americans. Not only has this industry bonded the looney with the crazy, it has turned millions of formerly democratic-leaning blue collar voters and traditional country club republicans into disinformation-fueled boneheads. These voters now send their like to state houses and Washington.

Americans should recall (if some ever knew), that Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany via legal elections, driven by voters who were convinced that the propaganda they had been fed for several years was the truth. Joseph Goebbels made Hitler possible. The disinformation industry made Trumpism possible. 

Goebbels knew his propaganda was bullsh*t; he created it. And now, thanks to recently released internal communications from FOX mega-wealthy elites to their mega-wealthy compatriots, so do they. Just as Goebbels held the German people in secret contempt, so do the Hannitys, Carlsons, Ingrams, Murdocks and various other players in the disinformation industry.

It seems that clearer heads want to tackle this systemic problem but they fear the backlash of the ‘free speech’ illuminati. Free speech is a necessary ingredient in the democratic soup. Take it out and the dish is something else entirely, and not a good something else. So, free speech is good. Then again, so is water, but drink enough of it in a short time and you die. Often, too much of a good thing is a bad thing, especially if the well has been poisoned.

The Clown doesn’t have a surefire solution to ensuring that voters are actually well-informed but he does know that ignoring the disinformation cancer that currently lurks in the bowels of America’s Great Experiment will eventually be fatal. We can’t touch up the X-rays. The nasty mass is there and very little is being done to slow the growth or treat it into remission.

America is a nation built on an idea. As such, it cannot survive the complete debasement of shared truths and common knowledge.

If you hear of some influential commission that is being formed to take on this edgy disinformation problem and that they are looking for upstanding members, please suggest the Clown. Given the size of clown shoes, the Clown is always upstanding.

Observoid of the Day: “It is precisely when a social order begins to fall apart that one can discern what has held it together in the first place”
— Robert Jackall

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