Bring Back Civics

This week, Americans saw firsthand that the President of the United States does not truly command the Executive Branch and is not fully accountable to voters. After clearing the way for Joe Biden in 2020, the Democratic Party has now replaced the winner of their primary with a woman who did not win a single state contest in 2020 or 2024.

If you’re reading this, you already know how our government actually works, as opposed to how it’s supposed to work on paper. The average, politically disengaged American has now seen it play out in real time… and shrugged.

I wrote yesterday about how our country continually sets new precedents that stray further from the founders’ framework. In 2024, where mass media, smartphones, and social media have destroyed attention spans and dulled our minds, nothing surprises us anymore.

Despite loudly proclaiming for more than three years that he was running, with corporate media affirming that he was “sharp as a tack,” President Biden stepped down from the campaign via tweet on a Sunday afternoon. Pundits gasped, but the average American barely raised an eyebrow. “Sure, I figured that would happen.”

Ten days ago, the once and future president was shot at a rally, emerging from the stage covered in blood, holding his fist triumphantly in the air. This moment energized Republicans, but the news cycle quickly moved on, and many average Americans will forget it in another week.

Leftist media is currently promoting Vice President Kamala Harris, pushing a narrative that she is “cool” and appeals to younger generations. This too will likely be forgotten soon, though not until after the Democratic National Convention, which will be breathlessly promoted by the same supposedly objective news media that scoffed at Hulk Hogan.

This national short-term attention span is detrimental to our Republic. It means power brokers can essentially do whatever they want because a critical mass of the American people simply don’t care. Ballot harvesting, candidate swapping, ignoring state election laws—none of it matters, because most people simply don’t care.

Part of the problem is that it is nearly impossible to know anything with certainty. A grainy 8mm video of President Kennedy’s assassination has fueled more than half a century of competing theories. You might think that ubiquitous smartphones in 1963 would have revealed the real story, but that’s not the case. Despite copious amounts of audio and video from Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, there is still no consensus on what actually happened, with numerous theories spreading across the internet.

With so much conflicting information, tuning out is a rational decision.

This is the paradigm exploited by the backers of Proposition 1, the jungle primary and ranked choice voting initiative in Idaho. Most people outside the political world don’t know the details of our system, so when signature gatherers told them this initiative would let everyone vote, they signed and returned to their regular lives.

Conservatives make a mistake by believing more information will inevitably lead to political change. The American people are drowning in information, which is why so many choose to tune it out. One more blog post about how you believe the 2020 election was stolen, or about the real story with COVID shots, or who is really pulling the strings in the White House, is not going to change anything.

So what can we do?

Education is crucial. We need schools to teach real civics, not just the grade school version many assume is accurate. Imagine if every young adult not only knew about the three branches of government and how a bill becomes law but also understood the influence of corporations and lobbyists, how the administrative state defies accountability, and how personnel is policy.

We don’t need to raise cynics, but we need people who understand how our society works and are willing to get involved. If, as Yeats said, the best lack all conviction, then we cede the levers of power to the worst. We need good, honorable, wise men and women stepping up to work in government and run for public office.

Maybe that’s you. If you complain each year about the quality of candidates on your ballot, maybe it’s a sign you need to step up yourself. Our legislators are just people, like you or me, with the same strengths and weaknesses. The skills that win elections are not always the same skills that make good lawmakers. It’s up to us to step up, as candidates, as voters, and as engaged citizens of a Republic.

“Raising awareness” is overrated. Talk is cheap, but action gets results. We aren’t going to keep our Republic by sitting at our desks.

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