Does @POTUS Matter in The Digital Era?

By Tripp Hudgins, Privileged White Guy

This will be short. You’re busy.

Our Republic (get that right, now), our Republic was fashioned by an exclusive group of white, property-owning, elite men. During the middle of the nineteenth century, various states extended the right to vote to all white men whether or not they owned property. The political center moved and The American Civil War quickly followed.

For the next century, voting rights were extended to African-Americans and women. Each time, the political center has moved and the notion of a Republic has been challenged.

So what?

Well, when you are the self-appointed elite/aristocracy, it’s easy to imagine a Republic working. As more and more people are given power, managing from the top down, which is what a Republic does, becomes more and more challenging. Perceived power resides among the hoi polloi but actual power to govern still resides among the elite.

This includes the current president.

Weird, right?

Now, add digital communications/social media and perceived political power is spread among everyone…unevenly, to be sure, but that sense of individual agency looms. Your vote “matters.” Yes. True.

But still only insofar as you can send a representative to govern you, you, the individual, do not govern yourself. Your elected official does that. They govern you as much if not more than they govern in your stead.

Surprised yet?

So, here’s the thing. We sent representatives, Electors, to echo the voting process (clunky, I know) and we have a President. They governed us and governed in our stead.

President Trump is desperately trying to govern a Republic as best as he knows. Yes, he’s a daft prig of a man (You’re fired!), but there he is. Governing. He’s governing of people who refuse to be governed. This is terrible for him and for us.

The office of the president of the United States was never intended to serve a complex democracy but a Republic.

But now, thanks to technology, we’re fully democratized. Technology has made it official. We’re there. All of us. Trolling the President. We’re calling our representatives and things. We’re telling them what we want. We tweet at POTUS.

But, fellow hoi polloi, the chaos is serious. “They” cannot govern us. We refuse to be governed. We will not let him govern us.

We wish to govern ourselves. America was never designed for this. Holy shit.

There are no more “betters” serving the “common good.” Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and even Hamilton are unwelcome here. There’s simply a majority enforcing its will through a system that was not designed for that process. Thus the woes of Electoral Math.

The American democracy was designed for the elites of this nation to govern the rest of us.

And that just doesn’t work anymore.

Neither does the office of President of the United States.