What's Wrong With the World?

 I'm writing in the wake of having watched Americans select an erratic convicted felon who's displayed traits of narcissism, racism, misogyny and authoritarianism as their head of state and commander in chief.  This isn't hyperbole and these are not trivial shortcomings.  He's promised to politicize the public service, enact high tariffs and conduct mass deportations, moves which economists assure us will do enormous damage to the US and world economies.  However, he's so unpredictable that nobody knows to what extent he'll actually go through with it and and many of his voters revel in the fear and worry this uncertainty instills in the broader population.  Even if he scales back on tariffs and deportations, there are other, potentially much more damaging actions he will almost certainly take like:

1. Sabotaging climate measures to address and mitigate climate change
2. Undermine world efforts to shore up democracy and stand up to authoritarianism
3. Further divide the US and the world along racial, gender and ideological lines
   

It hurts.  It hurts to know there are millions of people out there who for whatever reason would support this type of degeneracy.  It hurts to know this will harm my children's futures.  It hurts that this shakes my faith in democracy and lowers my opinions of the people with whom I share this planet.  What makes it even worse is in all of the online chatter I've read (and there's been a lot), I've yet to see a credible, comprehensive attempt at even understanding this mess, let alone fixing it.

One of the traits I've inherited from my father is my urge to fix things. When something I own breaks, my first tendency is to take it apart, understand how it works and see if I can fix it. Even when I can't (which is often), it helps me understand how things work so I'm positioned to get a better version of it next time.

So, I sit here and wonder.  What is causing our democratic institutions to fail?  Why are governments (which are supposed to be representing the will of the people) failing to make changes that make people happier? What causes people to turn to ridiculous billionaire saviours?

 Certainly, misinformation and disinformation are a significant part of the problem. Pollsters reported that Trump voters believed that economic benchmarks were much worse than they actually were.  Elon Musk bought Twitter (and renamed it X so I refer to it as Xitter) and weaponized it.  He's reportedly amplified his own voice and other commentators on the far right. Even before this, though, a swamp of right wing news sites, bloggers and other commentators have created an entirely separate reality for right wing viewers.  According to researchers, this is a direct threat to democracy.

Working class citizens felt they were being left behind.  It didn't help that Democrats spent billions forgiving student loans while the majority of Americans don't attend college. Trump voters reported that rent and groceries kept going up while billionaires got ever richer.  The Democrats attracted a majority of voters that made over $100,000 per year - which is a small minority of Americans.

In news reports, Trump voters claim that the Democrats heavy reliance on identity politics has turned them off.  Republicans were successful in branding the Democrats as the party of the elite and the out of touch.  While, Democrats have positioned themselves as champions of racial minorities, Republican support among many minorities (particularly Latinos and native Americans) has ballooned.

 There are no shortage of other theories.  On social media, every center and left account is shoehorning this loss into their favourite world view.  Socialists are blaming this on excessive capitalism.  Supporters of Palestine claim that it's because Democrats supported genocide in Gaza.  Feminists blame misogyny. Others blame racism.  Harris backers blame Biden for hanging on too long.  Biden loyalists blame Democrats for abandoning Biden.  I could go on.

No doubt there is truth in some or all of these claims.  However, it doesn't help to point at a dozen different problems without identifying the key ones.  And it doesn't explain why Americans would be seduced by an explicitly anti-democratic con man backed by billionaires into voting against their interests. 

We need social scientists to get back to evidence-based truth finding and help us figure out what's gone wrong.  Post-modernist thinking has produced a line of thinking where truth can't be ascertained and so it provides foundation from which to set a direction. 

We need real answers, supported by solid data and transparent analysis; compiled by people who aren't ideologically captured.