Populism, democracy, aristocracy and dictators - post-election thoughts/complaints

The Bernie bumper stickers are fading.  All the hopes and dreams represented by a candidate are now forgotten as we move forward in our new reality.  This is the forgetting of the casually involved, those who activate their attention/have their attention activated for them only for the duration of the presidential election process.  Others remain involved: “the involved minority” always active on the periphery.

How much do you research politics and economics?  Oh, if you’re like me do you (sometimes?) spend more time reading about sports than you do about topics that actually matter to your life?  And keep in mind these ideas of state are debated by motherfuckers who study this shit full time.  Which means your part-time, exclusively tuned-in only during the months around the election research amounts to a drop in the intellectual bucket.

What is the right way?  Kaleidoscopic, myriad interests.  Fundamentally different moral bases that people operate from.  Different levels of intellect demanding different levels of stimulation.  What are the foundational ideas of a nation?  Of a people?  Of a family?  How do you debate merits of a presidential candidate when you cannot agree to common definitions of words you debate with?

Is it not time to reach a consensus on fundamentals instead of the clusterfuck of interests that our distracted attention spans so cloudily focus on for brief periods of electoral time?  Can we not cede – if we do not already in practice do – the responsibilities of deciding our interest to those who are more intelligent?

We do cede decision-making powers to others since our government, fed-state-local, is representative.  How do you decide what being intelligent is, though?  That is a big question and recently I was considering the work of Jose Ortega y Gasset in this light.  Basically, let an aristocratic class solve our problems – this has been the state of affairs in so many times and places throughout history.  Heck, you may even say that it is the case today, though we celebrate some kind of ideal of democracy.

Everyone is equal and gets to have a say.  Mob rule.  Isn’t this the ideal?  Is this possible?  Desirable?  I’ll be honest: based on the way my fellow Americans behave I would like a beneficent dictator to take over.  Remember, dictator did not always have a negative connotation.  If only those that rule today had the interests of the people in mind . . . um, never gonna happen, right?