In Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom," Producer MacKenzie McHale said, A well-informed electorate is essential to the proper functioning of a healthy democracy. Inadequate information, or worse, wrong information, can lead to catastrophic decisions and impede vigorous debate.
In the national election four years ago, this blog posted "How Fares the Republic?" articles. Current answer: We made a catastrophic decision.
Looking for clues, we might first note that in the vast majority of cases in which the word "liberalism" appeared in our public discourse, what followed was utter nonsense, because our assumptions mix the "we're all in this together" outlook of liberalism with the class warfare, oppressor vs. oppressed outlook of the left. America was founded on the liberal ideas of the Declaration and Constitution, and can no more function with the agonistic assumptions of the left (or right) than a gasoline engine can run on diesel oil.
It is impossible to discuss liberalism and leftism as if they were the same without being intellectually incoherent. To do so is to pretend to be two incompatible things at the same time: Seeking win-win situations and having a zero-sum-game outlook; seeking what Washington called "the public good" and taking pride in being "oppositional," "adversarial," and "subversive"; holding slavery's negation of human equality deeply against American principles and "in course of ultimate peaceable extinction," as Lincoln argued, and holding, as Ta-Nehisi does, that "white supremacy" underlies all America does yesterday, today, and forever. ("The certain sins of the future.")
Being unable to discuss the principles of our liberal Founding in any coherent manner, we elected the most illiberal president possible: Authoritarian, bullying, vindictive, narcissistic, and childish. See pre-election posts on president-elect Trump here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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