Today's blog posting offers you the opportunity to hear from Roger Berkowitz, the Founder and Academic Director of The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College.
The complete text of one of Berkowitz's recent speeches will be available to you when you click the following link. His speech was titled, "Democracy and Power: Thoughts on the Return of Politics." I definitely recommend that you read the whole thing, but I want to comment specifically on the first paragraph, which introduces what Berkowitz has to say (emphasis added):
The thesis of my talk is fairly straightforward, although it may be a bit provocative. The liberal democratic world order, for all its successes, has systematically hollowed out political life. In its place, we built a technocratic, bureaucratic, and managerial society governed by experts, not citizens. That order is unraveling. What we face now is both a dangerous populist reaction—and an opportunity for the renewal of genuine politics.
I like the hopeful tone! Anyone reading this blog posting is liable to focus on the "dangers" of our contemporary politics. Things are changing, and changing rapidly, and even if a person thinks that they are changing in the right direction, it is obvious that our political situation is "unstable," and "unpredictable," and thus "dangerous." We're in the midst of a genuine political crisis, and things could get "out of control," pretty easily. A lot of people think that they're out of control already.
Of course, to reference a well-known claim (and, according to Wikipedia, an erroneous one), the Chinese character for "crisis" is said to be formed from the characters for both "danger" and "opportunity." These politically dangerous times we occupy are, perhaps, an opportunity for real change. That is definitely what Berkowitz is urging in his speech. I share this hope, but my comment, actually, is something different.
It is my belief that what Berkowitz says, in that introductory paragraph, is, in fact, an accurate description of our government today - even, and ever more so, at the "local" level. We are close to losing "self-government" because our government is, more and more, run by "managers," and by "experts," not by "citizens." About fifty years ago, from my very early days on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, I was complaining that the government was increasingly operating on the basis that ordinary citizens were electing the people, who would then hire the people, who would then run our lives for us.
Current concerns at the national level about a so-called "Deep State" reflect the rejection of a government run by unelected "managers." The Trump presidency is, largely, reflective of a rejection of this model of government (the model mentioned by Berkowitz), and if we don't like that model of government, then we need to get involved in government ourselves.
I am, truly, hopeful that we are, collectively, going to find a way to reassert ourselves, as citizens, and to restore "politics" to government, so that a government "of the people, and by the people, and for the people" will reassert itself, and prevail.
As I always note, when I quote Abraham Lincoln's hope for the nation, the most important thing is that our government be "by the people." Our personal involvement is absolutely demanded.
Let's start exploring what that means. It certainly means that "citizens," not "experts," should be making the big decisions.
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