The Cart Before The Horse
An Essay on Modern Society and Politics
Mybrid Wonderful, 12/25/2024
Audience: General Readers, 3 minute read
Today in America and the world we are all facing multiple failing systems, both socially and politically. There exists no apparent solutions being offered except games of musical political chairs. This essay argues the reason we have no solutions is that we are putting the cart before the horse.
The cart: politics
The horse: society
Does politics lead society or does society lead politics? This is really not a hard question to answer. A free country is one where society leads politics. Authoritarian governments lead controlled societies.
Yet, at least here in the US, all the public conversation is looking to the government to lead the people. That’s authoritarian appeal no matter a dictator or a group of people.
Therein lies the contradiction. Free people are looking for a government to lead them.
Why is this? This essay is for general readers so I will just suggest two fundamental causes:
- Government is smaller to think about.
- Social identity has fractured.
MAGA addresses these two factors where liberals do not.
First, MAGA recognizes that our social identity fracturing is unhealthy to a unified government ideology. The “again” in Make America Great Again is a call to revert the US identity to a previous social identity facade that is more cohesive. Liberals have no recognition of social identity being important.
Second, MAGA is appealing to revert the American government back to a time when the facade of a singular social identity was historically leading the government.
The most generous praise one can heap on MAGA today is that they are appealing to the historical success by previous generations of American societies and the American government. MAGA is simply trying to revert back to what is known to have worked.
The flaw in the MAGA movement is their goal of going back to a previous social identity facade. It was always a facade. Black people were slaves at America’s conception. Women couldn’t vote. In fact only landowners could vote. Public education didn’t exist. Native Americans were ignored completely. This facade of some singular social identity was always troubled and constantly being revised.
Since this is a general reader audience essay then I will withhold the discussion on how public education, technology, population growth, and global economics have destroyed the facade of a single American social identity facade permanently. There is no American identity possible today. MAGA is literally chasing a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Americans are now thirty-percent non-religious and that trend is expected to hit fifty percent in another generation. MAGA cannot succeed in unifying an American identity. No one can.
Liberals cannot succeed either by solely focusing on fixing government. Focusing on fixing the government because it is a much smaller problem versus fixing society will only lead to authoritarianism if any success is to be achieved. How can it be otherwise if there is no common identity?
The question before each of us is how does a fractured society lead politics?
The answer is Irreni World Scale! Join an MGO today!