"We've exported so much Democracy over the past thirty years that we've run out of it here at home!" Those were my words two days ago in a conversation with a close family member. I was half joking of course, though truth be told, I've come to find very little difference in this world between parody and prophesy.
How exactly did the self-proclaimed leaders of the free world come to find themselves at this macabre crossroads? How is it that we stand ready to abandon our faith in the will of the people?
As with most problems, it began long ago. Several decades ago, the Court of Public Opinion began its degeneration into a gladiatorial spectacle of moral relativism. There were no longer such things as "truth" and "fact". There was only opinion. And everyone was equally entitled to one.
But why did that moment mark the beginning of the end for the Western world? Well, it was because Democracy is and has always been critically dependent upon an informed populace. And without any interest in facts, there was no longer any perceived need for education. A janitor could be as much a statesman as someone with a graduate degree in Public Policy. Both could receive equal air time. Both of their sets of beliefs were of comparative value.
In fact, this brave new world of philosophical subjectivism became completely addicted to the establishment of duality. For every possible subject, there was a "left" side and a "right" side, of equal and opposite value. Even Saint Peter and the Devil were made equivocal, and both given their equal and opposite weights upon the scales of justice.
The ideologues of the world quickly took note. Once politicians learned that the media was devoted to centrism instead of neutrality, and perspectives instead of facts, their corresponding movements' inextricable devotion to extremism was soon thereafter born. For the farther they moved to the extreme left or right, the more they could convince the middle ground to follow them.
So here we now are. Everything under the Sun has been politicized. And we feel more divided than ever. That is because we have built a system which deliberately both promotes and profits off of our differences, no matter how trivial they are.
Until now, there has been money to be made for those who sow division. And it has proven very lucrative. Imagine if that were not the case. Imagine if those who surfed the waves of political chaos reaped the seeds of conflagration which they had sown. Because at some point, when our society stands at the precipice between war and peace, that will very likely be the case.
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