The Most Important Votes Are Yet to Be Cast
With President Donald Trump’s historic and resounding election victory, many are relieved. His supporters may feel, “Mission accomplished!” while his opponents (those not throwing tantrums) might’ve resigned themselves to reality. There’s a sense that we can breathe easier now, relax, and return to “life as normal.” Yet overlooked is that the most important ballots are yet to be cast.
What am I talking about? We cast votes every time we buy a product or service, pay for a movie or imbibe other entertainment, watch a news broadcast, purchase a newspaper or view a website, use a search engine, send a child to a school or college, or express a belief. These choices are daily “votes” because they determine what will prevail in our culture. If a news station peddles propaganda, a university destructively indoctrinates youth, a corporation funds perverse agendas, or a Big Tech company nefariously influences our elections, it’s only because too many of us are patronizing it in some way. If the entity’s customers/users disappeared, so would it. If activists are effectively spreading destructive ideas, it’s only because too many of us are tolerating it. In other words, our daily market/social-realm votes serve to shape our culture, and this matters because, as the late Andrew Breitbart famously put it, “Politics is downstream from culture.”
Under representative government, you cannot do politically what’s rendered impossible culturally. Moreover, while elections are important, how much substantive and enduring change will a political outcome deliver if our culture continues deteriorating? To analogize it, conceptualize civilization as being like a large ship. This ship is steadily drifting toward a great waterfall at the ends of the Earth (or, to use our conventional terminology, is drifting “left”), at whose plunge-pool terminus lies the final resting place of deceased civilizations. This drift is cultural movement, but there is political movement, too, where on the ship itself people move left or right. And being on the right side is preferable, as the starboard view is that of the promised land. Yet even if you can stay on the vessel’s right side, the steady drift ensures that this land of milk and honey becomes ever more distant, ever more elusive — and that, without restoring the culture, destruction will draw ever nearer.
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