Lack of Trust in Failed Institutions and the Benefits of Polarization in Society

There is a lot of complaining about polarization in American society. Politicians love to say that “house divided can not stand” and that now we are more divided than ever,  sometimes they get nostalgic about earlier decades claiming that in the past America was more united and Americans shared common goals and common values. 

Each politician, party or group blames their rivals for being divisive and tries to pretend to be the champion of unity with “stronger together” kind of a message.

All of this type of demagoguery ignores the fact that it is absolutely normal for democratic society (and for all societies including feudal, capitalist, even socialist) to be divided! 

There are various social groups of people with conflicting interests and by definition can not be represented by the same party or same leaders because of this conflict of interest. 

Business owners and their employees have opposite interests : business owner wants to pay less to their employees to make more profit and employee wants the employer business owner to pay higher salary to earn more money.

Landlords and tenants have opposite interests: landlord wants to spend as little as possible to maintain their building and to charge the highest market rate for the apartment to make a profit and tenant wants cheap rent and at the same time perfectly maintained building.

Consumers want highest quality service or product at the cheapest imaginable price while service provider or product manufacturer wants to maximize profit and efficiency by providing minimally required quality service and product.

Affluent people flee from neighborhoods invaded by racially and culturally different, impoverished, often less civilized groups that bring crime, trash and noisy teenagers with them and turn those neighborhoods into crime infested shitholes. Therefore,  affluent and middle class interests lie in preserving the civilized and affluent character of their neighborhood whereas more disadvantaged , often black and brown minorities want to move into that same upscale neighborhood to enjoy the same lifestyle as their white and often Asian counterparts but without financial ability to do so and without cultural skills to create a upscale feel for the neighborhood (inability to keep the neighborhood clean, gangs, noisy kids etc). 

How can all these groups be represented by the same leaders? They all have conflicting interests and conflicting goals and each group wants to be represented by leaders that will pursue that particular group’s interest  – not “general public” interest! 

It is natural for lower-income black voters dependent on government subsidies  to vote democrat as long as democrats keep offering more subsidies, expanding social services etc.

It is just as natural for white business people and white conservatives to vote for those republicans who will fight for family values and lower taxes.

Its also natural for any minority voters who are business minded and self sufficient to vote Republican and for those who prefer to rely on government assistance or work within the government to vote democrat.

What is unnatural is for self sufficient affluent individuals regardless of race to vote for increase in taxes or expansion of government control over society. Its also unnatural for black people to vote for white president who would open the borders to flood their neighborhood with foreigners.

Its unnatural for Latino voters who often become victims of violent crime in their neighborhood to vote for liberal District Attorneys who will refuse to prosecute criminals because of systemic racism myth. 

SOCIAL COMPROMISE 

Mainstream establishment consensus is that our institutions reflect some sort of social compromise between various social and racial groups in our diverse society and this compromise gives legitimacy to what these institutions do and to our democracy.

Mainstream establishment likes our institutions and claims that they represent real democracy with safeguards against totalitarian rule and corruption.

Mainstream establishment gets very nervous when some “rebels” attack our institutions claiming those “rebels” pose a threat to democracy. 

A mainstream myth about democracy is that democracy gives power to the people to decide their own destiny. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? 

People vote and elect leaders that represent their interests to the best of their ability and because of term limits if leaders fail, they get voted out of the office so that people can choose someone better qualified.  This is in contrast to autocracies where there is no meaningful elections, only sham elections and corrupt tyrants stay in power and abuse their people until they die of natural causes or overthrown by an insider coup or bloody revolution.  On the surface democracy seems like a much better alternative. 

Unfortunately, when we start really looking into what happens to democracy in practice, how leaders actually get elected and what how our institutions actually operate, we realize that our current democracy needs some major improvement to compete with some of the autocracies and totalitarian regimes.

INSTITUTIONS

We start our analysis with the institutions. Do they really represent the people? Who do they represent better, what kind of people? 

If you are a taxpayer/ business person does institution called “IRS’ properly represent your interests to your satisfaction? 

What about local government institutions that collect your property tax to pay for someone  else’s kids’ education in public school ? You can afford paying for private school so your kid goes to private school, why should you pay property tax to subsidize someone else ‘ s kids’ education?

As a taxpayer you are probably not very happy with the IRS or local government taking your money? 

On the other hand, if you live below poverty line or barely making ends meet to pay your rent and suddenly you get child credit or other poverty based exemptions from paying taxes and in fact getting a cash refund you feel grateful to IRS for helping you to survive plus you may be grateful to the IRS that cracks down on tax evaders who don’t want to pay their “fair share” to subsidize the public assistance programs you directly benefit from .

Taxpayers therefore may not feel that IRS as an institution represents their interest while people dependent on public assistance or benefitting from tax rebates and exemptions feel that it does represent their interests.

Same applies to judicial system: if you lost your litigation trial in court, you blame the system for being rigged and unfair, but if you won, you feel grateful and reassert your trust in the judicial system.

If police officers caught a burglar red handed exiting your house with a bag of jewelry , you trust police, – but if you are that burglar or his family you express your distrust in police as an institution and blame systemic racism for “wrongfully “ prosecuting the burglar. 

We only trust those institutions that do something good for us, and don’t trust those that don’t.

Lets not forget also that most of the government institutions represent themselves, their own self interest. As an example, environmental protection agency is not going to gleefully report to you that climate crisis is over because if they do all their employees will lose their jobs!  BY DESIGN, EPA and various NGOs dealing with “climate change” must advocate more environmental regulations to sustain themselves.  To do that they must always be ALARMIST and spread panic and “raise consciousness” about impending apocalypses being caused by fossil fuels!

Do they care about millions of workers that may lose their manufacturing jobs because of zero emissions requirements and switching to expensive electric cars? No, they don’t – they represent environmental activists and bureaucrats , not the general public. 

Can you trust our healthcare institutions? Do your doctors really prescribe the medications that will cure you without side effects? Or do they overmedicate to avoid being sued? Or do they instead of getting to the roots of your illness just giving  you addictive painkillers to get kickbacks from big pharma? 

Can you trust the educational institutions? Do they really teach your kids about how to get into the best school, acquire useful skills and pursue a successful career or do they brainwash your kid with some diversity and inclusion propaganda and fail to teach them useless subjects only to justify unionized teaching jobs?

Therefore there cannot be general unequivocal trust in the institutions without keeping them all in check and under scrutiny and making sure they serve your interest and it is normal for  you to defy the institutions that don’t and try to change them . This is how polarization happens: people whose interests are not being served by certain institutions unite against those institutions attempting to change them!

DEMOCRACY

In theory, democracy is based on fair electoral system  where well informed voters choose their representatives who passed competency test and are liked by the population.

Voters are a problem number one

In practice, voters do not care to get relevant information about the candidates and vote along party lines or with their emotions. Voters demand that politicians lie to them about giving voters what they want – voters want politicians to tell them what they want to hear, not the actual truth.   Even putting aside party affiliations, voters look at irrelevant features in the candidate : their race, their gender, their moral character (i.e. lack of extramarital affairs) , even appearance (voters want tall presidents lol) –  but voters forget about the most important and relevant features like being competent, like having enough relevant experience, or specific policy choices of the candidate. 

Media are a problem number two 

In a democracy there should be a complete uncensored freedom of speech , public discourse unrestrained by any taboos and equal representation of opposing views. In a democracy there should not be one party monopoly over the media and neither the government nor media corporations should be allowed to censor any speech, whether they believe it’s a hate speech or not,  and regardless of who might get offended .  We are mature enough to decide what views align with our values and what views don’t, we are mature enough to decide what candidates we want to support for any elected office if we have free access to all the information and misinformation – we as audience should have the right to decide which one is which.

In practice, in all western “democracies” including the U.S. liberal progressives took over the media completely, especially social media and using their monopoly over the media they control the mainstream media narrative. In the U.S. government is prohibited from imposing censorship on the media by constitution, so instead of doing it directly, it conspires with democrat friendly big tech giants and mainstream media run by liberal minded oligarchs to actively suppress and censor not only conservatives, but any views that liberals don’t approve. Using their status as private companies, mainstream media control the narrative in favor of democrat party to the exclusion of any other parties or movements. When we use our cellphones to look up the news, most of the news coverage on our phones is dedicated to smearing and attacking opposition and praising democrat government. This was even true under Republican predecessor of the current president. Social media suppressed Republican president’s ability to directly communicate with Americans under false pretext that he would incite violence.  Mainstream media were instrumental in causing Covid hysteria and suppressing any alternative views about Covid and its treatment.  Mainstream media provided cover for the current president suppressing any negative information about him. Mainstream media used their monopoly status to shamelessly incite violence in the aftermath of George Floyd incident to destabilize the situation in the country to help democrat takeover. Mainstream media uses false pretext of protecting the voters from “disinformation” or create “safe” environment for certain groups to censor free speech.  Today, mainstream media continue to interfere in electoral process by serving as propaganda instrument of the current regime against the opposition. 

Until private social media companies are restrained by law from any moderation that results in censorship and until mainstream online, TV and radio proportionally represent all views, including extreme views, opposition views, offensive views etc, we can not have a democracy and media institutions can not be trusted and should be dismantled.

Big business meddling in politics is a problem number three

Due to certain Supreme court rulings, and other changes in  growing commingling of business and politics, big monopolistic corporations received green light to heavily invest into the political candidates they like and invest in smear campaigns against candidates they don’t like.

This reduces the power of voters in favor of special interests, which also contributes to further erosion of democracy.  When billionaire owners of big corporations like Disney, or Big Tech, or Big Pharma or Big oil or Big Social media decide to impose their views on the public by supporting candidates they like, general public is deprived of the opportunity to select the candidates that will not allow the big corporations and self serving government to abuse the population.

When certain billionaires want to impose their utopian ideas about how to deal with crime and criminals, they invest in liberal DA’s campaigns helping liberal pro criminal DA’s successfully compete against District Attorneys who are pro victim and tough on crime. As a result, liberal District Attorneys win and ruin public safety.

In swing states like Georgia, woke corporations invested heavily in progressive senate candidates who are trying to change Georgia against the will of its long time residents and in favor of newcomers who hate local culture and traditions and seek to bring Georgia to the level of decay and degradation only seen in California.

Big oil candidates in the past contributed to environmental disasters and environmental pollution .

Doctor lobby caused reforms that made doctors almost immune from prosecution and litigation if they hurt or kill their patient because patient signs multiple waivers of liability forced by doctors’ lobby upon population.

Developer lobby pays bribes to local city officials to build ugly mixed use “projects” and McMansions increasing population density, and thus decreasing quality of life of local residents and destroying historic character of our neighborhoods.

Self – serving Government lobby forces the expansion of bureaucracy at taxpayer’s expense.

Basically, when various special interests, big corporations, big government billionaires dictate policy, this is no longer a democracy and the laws that are being made do not serve the  interests of the population.

SUMMARY

We can no longer trust our institutions because they have not been shaped by us and do not serve our interests. Our institutions, both private and government institutions are a product of negotiations between various lobby groups and special interests, that perpetuate their power at our expense. In order to change the status quo in our favor, we have to gain enough power to be able to undermine the establishment institutions and build new power structure that reflects our interests.  Polarization of political views is not only normal, but is necessary to reflect the interests of the public against the interests of the establishment institutions and their supporters. Democracy will return when free speech returns. Free speech is necessary to expose the rigged rules that help establishment power structure to perpetuate its control over society and to discuss better alternatives to the current corrupt system.

When billionaires and special interests can no longer influence politics, when new institutions emerge that prioritize the interests of self sufficient, successful and productive individuals over bureaucracy, big business and welfare addicted parasites; when all media, including social media will provide unrestrained access to anyone expressing their point of view , we will be able to trust our new institutions and will no longer be polarized as a society because as winners we won’t have any reasons to fight between ourselves.