The American election has given us a reason currently to ask this with the runaway success of candidate Bloomberg. Without many public appearances and just through his billions and media connections, the guy is having an enormous impact.
An impact that appears to be proportional to his spending:
Some of the other candidates are concerned and put off:
The Daily Wire“Tomorrow night, for the first time, you’re going to be on a debate stage with the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, perhaps you’ve heard this. Two polls out today show that he’s your closest competition,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper said. “Right now, do you see him as the biggest threat to you, to getting the nomination?”“This is what I do know and this I feel very strongly about,” Sanders said. “You know, Mr. Bloomberg has every right in the world to run for president of the United States. He’s an American citizen. But I don’t think he has the right to buy this election. … I think it’s a bit obscene that we have somebody who, by the way, chose not to contest in Iowa, in Nevada, in South Carolina, in New Hampshire where all of the candidates – we did town meetings, we were talking to thousands and thousands of people, working hard – he said, ‘I don’t have to do that. I’m worth $60 billion. I have more wealth than the bottom 125 million Americans. I’ll buy the presidency.’ That offends me very much.”Moments later, Sanders was asked by an audience member, “If nominated, would you accept help from billionaires like Bloomberg and if not, why throw away something that can make a huge difference in winning 2020?”Sanders repeatedly refused to answer the question.
If it is the case that the American people can so easily be influenced and guided in the polls through message crafting and advertisements, we have a lot more problems than just this one time showing of Bloomberg. It means that many of our elections have solely been determined by the people who got out the most clever messaging to the most people.
It means that maybe even "Russian trolls" are capable of diabolically influencing the average American voter.
Traditionally, my response to the accusation of trolls winning the election has been one that is very much in good faith with the spirit of democracy: American people are able to see through lies and, moreover, the candidate that wins the election is the one that appeals most successfully to the will of the people by addressing their concerns and coming up with plans that they believe will positively benefit their life.
So, in a sense, there can be no meddling. Democracy is not open to meddling in the sense of being won through "trolling" or shallow advertisements because it is the people coming together to reach a consensus. The only meddling there ever could be would have to be direct.
The position of the Democrats appears to be one that suggests that the American people can and are manipulated, consent is totally manufactured, and the election is not about the consensus but about gaming the people. Politics becomes a game of deceiving good people.
In a sense, this is denying the agency of the people. It leads us to only one conclusion: Americans are easily fooled. This undermines the very basis of democracy -- if the electorate can be swindled so easily, why even have elections? Why have what really matters in the long-run determined by the fickle and malleable crowd?
People who advance these arguments do not actually believe in democracy but at the same time they accuse President Trump and the Russians of "undermining democracy."
Do we really have to believe that elections are really about charlatans practicing demagoguery? Does it all really not matter? Do we really have no foundation? Can we construct a system which would actually represent the people's will...? Do the people even have something that we can point to and indicate is their will..?
It's our duty not to our partisan politics, but to truth, to try to answer whether or not it is the case that our democracy is fundamentally invalid.
The Truth is In Between
It is hard to say that the average American voter has no idea what they are doing. It's overly cynical and makes the average man, who we are all fighting and working for, seem incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, and he comes off as a complete rube. There's something utterly nihilistic and against the Christian spirit to suggest that people are incapable of knowing the truth.
Yet, it is ridiculous to suggest that people cannot be fooled, or that people cannot be manipulated into a completely disagreeable state. For we do know that there have been regimes that have practiced evil with a startling amount of consent from huge parts of the populace, and we also know that there were cultures that practiced cannibalism and torture as if it was a normal, everyday part of life.
A healthy, educated populace that have a media actively trying to report the truth objectively, without spin, and who is open to dissent in its editorials and hasn't created a complex system of sacred cows by which they manipulate and dazzle the people can be expected to be a good electorate. These are people that won't be "gamed" or "bought," because they are interested in patiently hearing the candidates out, discovering the reality, and voting based on their principles but not based on prejudices and unproven absolutes that they are goaded to believe by overzealous personalities in the media.
We can actually achieve something like an organic community where man is not being relentlessly manipulated by the managerial class, and where man is free to come to his own conclusions which would then be reflected in an electoral process.
Yet, it seems to be that these circumstances are rare, and this is not due to the shortcomings of the people at the bottom, but because of the lust for power of the people at the top.
It is easy to then say that the truth really is in between with man, and even in the best of circumstances, there will be people who are being manipulated and lead around. This will either be due to their personal fault (a lack of real interest or education), systematic failures of the government or media to do their job, or even from manipulation of the managerial classes.
Nobles, Elders, & Bishops to Guard Them
Every system needs a series of checks and balances. We should always have votes, of course, because it is important for the will of the people to be known to some degree, but we should also be weary of the fact that naked democracy does turn into mob rule, and that people are entirely capable of being manipulated.
In the current American system, the checks and balances are the government being a balance on themselves, and perhaps the unspoken check of the 2nd amendment. There is no apparent check on the media and the machinations of billionaires and the mercantile class, and with the religious institutions becoming increasingly powerless, it appears that only libertine impulses have taken over among the people.
The fact of the matter is that we need a more dynamic system that has more factors in play, ensuring greater stability and safeguarding the people not just from the government, but from a media and culture that is dominated by money and one-sided ideas, all originating in NYC or LA.
What ultimately is required is a system in which there are static forces to offset the massive cultural shifts, and this can actually come in the form of strengthened religion and cultural institutions -- namely, cultural institutions that act independent of those which are designed solely for monetary gain and cheap entertainment. In short, we need more active participation in our society by our elders and our Bishops, and it would behoove us to have a class of ennobled people that served as cultural icons of greater importance than celebrities.
We should not be under the illusion that all of nobility was always noble, but we should remember that strict codes of honor being regularly enforced are vital to the well-being of the national spirit.
Since we do not have these things, our culture boils and spills over, and the rights that our Constitution guaranteed us are under threat. The electorate is in a bad position to making serious decisions because it is hopelessly partisan and often voting for either their won direct financial benefit, or they are under the influence of a culture of nihilism and libertinism that should have no role in how any society is governed.
This is certainly a low point for democracy, and even though it can be said that our electorate continues to have plenty of healthy actors in it, we are not in an enviable position at all.
I will try to write more on the theme of democracy and culture through the course of the election and try to unpack these problems more.
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