Comment by radiofreeeuropa
5 days ago
The history of the last ~100 years of the study of democracy by basically pro-broad-franchise-democracy academics has been a journey from:
"Well, the masses must not be stupid, as restricted-franchise and anti-democratic folks have suggested, because this seems to kinda work. Let's study voter behavior to learn more about this."
to
"Uh. OK so we checked a hundred different ways, several times each to be sure, and they're in-fact incredibly poorly informed and have awful reasoning skills and their behavior, in aggregate, isn't driven by what we might hope it is at all. But, uh... I really want there to be a good outcome here, so, um, let's make some fuzzy guesses at how some kind of Wisdom of Crowds thingy and some sort of system-equilibria-seeking effects might save us? And let's keep double-checking those studies that kept proving voters are really dumb, because maybe... maybe we got something wrong?"
to
"Yeah all that was bullshit cope on our parts, it's all wrong. It's amazing this works at all. Voters are amazingly stupid, to a degree that's so hard to believe we spent decades and decades making sure—like it's proven about as surely as is the law of universal gravitation; cannot practically be educated out of that, maybe at all, and especially not if we first have to get them to vote to make that happen; and everything's basically held together by noise and circumstance and social norms, until it isn't. Go ahead and make that whisky a double. And line up another."
Intellectuals and academics coming to these conclusions and talking down to the populace is a big part of what has fueled anti-intellectualism and paved the way for demagogues to take over. If your response to today's ugly political landscape is that people are stupid, then you're not helping.
Sorry, I was contributing the painfully-well-backed scientific perspective. If we're doing public-politics kayfabe here, too, then yes that was a faux pas. I'm not trying to campaign though, I'm trying to inform.
If one mistakes the kayfabe for genuine, an awful lot of observed behavior and outcomes remain confusing... the science is there if anyone wants it (reading lists for relevant courses are widely available, journals are not that hard to come by, or just grab Democracy for Realists and follow up with reading criticism of it and checking its sources) and at least the basic fact that very few voters think or behave remotely like anyone hoping for a well-informed, rational, and empathetic electorate might hope, is depressingly solid.
This is understood by everybody operating at a level of importance in media and politics, so a bunch of what they do (and its efficacy) will also be confusing if one disregards it. Even when they talk about how they believe in the voters, and blah blah—that's part of the kayfabe, that's a marketing message, they 100% don't believe that because not only is it definitely not true, you also lose elections (or viewership, or whatever) more often if you act like (not say—act like) it's true. It's not a lie they can afford to hold on to past the lowest levels of their professions, as they'll be concretely punished for the gap between their belief and reality and replaced by others who get it.