After Trump, 8 requirements for restoring normalcy
President Donald Trump tried to use mobs and vigilantes as a substitute for the constitution and the Republic. President-Elect Joe Biden, however, promises to restore America to normalcy, a process that requires all Americans to consider the following prerequisites:
1- The system is working. While not perfect, the US system can always be improved, but should never be destroyed or replaced. Americans should keep their Republic — with its constitution, founding literature and history — away from political bickering. History is history and, when discussed, should be always put in context, not anachronistically reframed from a current perspective to score political points. The Founding Fathers owned slaves, but that does not diminish the value of the founding literature that they produced and that served as the basis for the rise of one of the world’s most successful nations.
2- Identity politics kills democracy. In democracy, people are asked to choose policies that best serve their interests. Choice is usually based on two considerations: The viability of the promised policies and the ability (and honesty) of the candidate promising to deliver them. When identity comes in the way and citizens start voting for their candidates based on ethnicity or religion, democracy becomes demography, and the battle of ideas becomes tribal conflict.
3- Accurate Information is imperative. An informed citizenry is the cornerstone of a healthy republic and a functioning democracy. In obtaining information, citizens rely on mass media, which should go back to playing the role of informing citizens, not indoctrinating them. Media should tell people how to think, not think for them. By trying to indoctrinate citizens, media has repulsed many and forced them to go shopping for sources of information elsewhere, hence falling into the arms of spin masters (like Trump) and conspiracy theorists. When fabrications replace the news, alternative reality replaces reality.
4- Media Reform. Media is the Fourth Estate, which means it keeps an eye on government to help keep it transparent. Media, however, should not keep an eye on citizens, judge their values or their cultures, vilifying some while romanticizing others. There is nothing inherently good or bad about any ethnic or religious group. All civilizations have skeletons in their history closets, and it would be best to treat bygones as bygones. It is unfair, and pointless, to blame people today for what their ancestors did or did not do decades, centuries or even millennia ago.
5- Reform of academic institutions and restoring them to being spaces for free thinking is crucial. Academia should not issue certificates of approval to this idea or that ideology. Academic institutions would be well advised to remember that what seems like a reasonable orthodoxy today, might sound like a backward ideology in the future. Throughout human history, thousands of ideas once looked solid, but were later disproven and trashed. Facts are facts. Making sense of facts, however, is always open for different kinds of interpretation. Academics should debate, and convince their audiences of the viability of their ideas, not censor and shame whatever disagrees with the mainstream opinion. Hypothesizing and theorizing has always been at the heart of academia. Dismissal and arrogance has always been the work of the uneducated.
6- Modesty is an asset. America is the world leader. America is not the world. While it is imperative America does its part in lowering carbon emissions, even if America goes down to zero (which is impossible because Americans will have to stop breathing), there will be only a decrease of 15 percent in global emissions, and the planet will still melt. Reducing carbon emissions alone puts America’s economy at a disadvantage, as other industrial nations use cheaper fossil fuel while Americans pay more for clean energy. Germany has been dying to construct Nordstream II to import Russian gas. Iran nuclear deal allows Tehran to export 2.3 million barrels of oil a day. So while America can lead on climate change, the problem is much bigger than America.
7- America is not the devil. The world has been a terrible place since the dawn of history. Nations have colonized, enslaved and killed each other since times immemorial. The European Enlightenment helped decrease wars and increase trade, cooperation and science. America and the West, mostly informed by Enlightenment ideas, have been among the more humane civilizations in global history. Pretending that the world was an oasis of peace but European colonials — and after them America — disturbed it, is not history. It is nonsense.
8- Democracy is the best government, and it has delivered — not only economic surplus and prosperity — but stability, even in less wealthy nations. Democracy allows for the trial of different policies and ideas, with an informed citizenry being the jury and deciding every two, or four, years which ideas serve work and which do not.
