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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm guessing a lot of people here have heard of this. It's a cult classic in tech circles, supposedly.

But it is worth pimping, because it is fantastic: https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public.../dp/B07K6Y6KGZ

Gurri is an ex-CIA media analyst. Book was done in 2014, and pretty much predicted the "populist" surge that followed since 2016. He's since updated it with a lengthy chapter addressing Brexit, Trump, etc.

It's quite insightful. His assessments are not political, but technical. His main thesis is that govt is not longer truly in control because it has lost a monopoly on information and narrative creation. The "public" as he defines it is not in control either. It is, however, armed with tons of information, able to delegitimize the govt (or "elites," as he states somewhat sarcastically) at every turn. The problem is this "public" has no set of plans for a replacement of the current institutions. All it can do, from Occupy, to the Arab Spring, to Italy's Five Star party, is negate whoever is in charge, throw them out of office and replace them with another incompetent regime.

His final point is that the public is unrealistic -- it expects too much from govt and is impatient when it doesn't receive its Utopian desires. He sees a future in which local communities dominate more, are more connected and yet atomized, and in which information flattens hierarchies. The "pyramid of power" currently in place won't disappear, as bureaucrats and politicians and corporate actors have too much invested in it to allows its disintegration. But de facto, it will have less and less power.

Or, alternatively, he sees the possibility of the "elite" structures stamping down on the public via repression. But he sees that as unlikely, as information and distrust - even among members of the governing classes - has made that kind of coordinated action nearly impossible.

The book is highly engaging and a very easy read. The guy's humility despite his obviously enormous knowledge and powers of insight also makes him eminently likeable. If you dig Ian Bremmer, his voice is similar.

The government has never had a monopoly on information or narrative creation, so whatever it lost, that's not it.

IMO, governments lost a lot of legitimacy after the 2008 financial crisis. There were no consequences for rich people who did shady things, and they got bail-outs. There were a lot of consequences for ordinary people, and no bail-outs.

Conservatives have given up on the idea that the government can do anything other than beat on other people (other countries, immigrants, people who disagree with the police). The progressive left is primarily focused on culture-war issues that are not immediate concerns for other people. Moderate Democrats will only act cautiously in a way calculated not to really solve any problem. None of them have any promise to really change anything. All of this is at least partly true in a lot of other industrialized countries, too.