Hive Mind
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
For a brief moment, I felt energized and hopeful. I thought things were changing. True, it wasn’t at all clear what they were changing into. Still, there was a sense of movement. Which meant possibility. Perhaps even dynamism. That stifling sense of being trapped in the stagnating culture of a dammed-up river had lifted. It seemed that the wall was breaking. Finally!
With apologies to readers with strong Democratic Party loyalties (I love you even if we disagree), what produced this brief sense of possibility was that disastrous Trump-Biden debate. It wasn’t that I was happy to see Joe Biden in such obviously horrible shape. No. Not at all. That was sad and at times painful to watch. Much as I’m not a fan politically, on a visceral human level, I felt badly for him.
What made me happy, though, was the brief period that followed, when some semblance of meaningful open debate broke out among the Democratic party faithful themselves. “Biden must go!” many argued. “We must have a new candidate. We have to shift gears!”
“How can you say that?” others retorted. “We can’t change horses in midstream. And besides, it was just a bad night. We must remain loyal!”
To me, such dissension was a most welcome change. Because there hasn’t been any meaningful public debate within Blue State America for years. With the one exception of the Israel-Palestine conflict, it’s all been shut down. Blue Staters can’t safely discuss the true complexities of any hot-button issue amongst themselves: Covid, crime, immigration, DEI, gender ideology, foreign policy — any serious questions, let alone disagreements, have long been off-limits (because Trump).
To me at least, this intellectually stifling situation made the post-debate breakdown of consensual groupthink enormously refreshing. “Finally!” I thought to myself. “Reality is biting back.” And so, quite naively, I imagined that this break in the Blue State discourse dam would release all sorts of pent-up energies.
For starters, I thought that the absurdly high level of credulity accorded legacy media (e.g., The New York Times, NPR, MSNBC) by older college-educated Blue Staters would finally plummet. After all, we’d heard endless assurances from our most “respectable” news sources that the President was “sharp as a tack,” “the best Biden ever,” and so forth and so on. Any evidence to the contrary (and there was a lot of it) was stridently and reliably denounced as “right-wing disinformation.”
To take one of countless examples, the once-incisive leftist magazine Mother Jones published the following takedown of “bogus Republican narratives” only a week before the disastrous debate that proved their essential accuracy:
This month, Sinclair Broadcast Group has flooded a vast network of local news websites with misleading articles suggesting that President Biden is mentally unfit for office. The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which are then repackaged to resemble news reports.
Post-debate, of course, most of the very same media outlets that had painted questioning Biden’s mental acuity as tantamount to treason made an immediate 180. Suddenly, they insisted that he had to step aside from the 2024 nomination now. Yet in the confusion following the debacle, not every legacy media outlet agreed. And so for that brief moment, there was some serious dissension in the ranks.
Following this break in The Narrative, Blue State Americans even started debating amongst themselves. Is it really right for Biden to step aside this late in the game? If so, shouldn’t there be some sort of quasi-primary process so that the voters can be involved? And who should the new nominee be, anyway?
The invisible cultural dam that had long kept everyone on the same page (or ignored, silenced, and/or ostracized) seemed to be breaking. This was uplifting. Energizing. Promising. Because if Blue Staters were arguing about something so fundamental, the next step would have to be questioning the literal party line further — right?
After all, most people understand quite well that no one reaches the pronounced state of age-related decline that Biden so alarmingly evidenced in that debate overnight. It takes time. Years, in fact. Logically, this means that the mainstream media, along with the White House and elite Democrats more broadly, have been lying to the public for a good long time.
Consequently, it was easy to imagine that the next question that would have to be asked by a good number of those who’d sincerely believed this false narrative would be: If they’ve been lying about this, then what else have they been lying about, too?
But nope. Silly me. That’s not what happened. Not at all.
Fast forward a few weeks and such questions have not only not been asked, but a shiny new Narrative has been joyously embraced. Every revisionist talking point has quickly fallen into place: Biden has been a terrific President (like George Washington!) He selflessly chose to step aside for the good of the country. (Thank you, Joe!) In the abundance of his virtue and wisdom, he generously bequeathed us none other than the perfect leader we need for this most perilous moment. (Kamala!) And now, to Save Our Democracy, we must support her in every way that we possibly can. (LET’S DO THIS!)
And so: The KHive is buzzing. The donors are donating. The corporate media is back singing the same tune. The Democratic faithful feel newly energized, happy, and hopeful. And rightly so: It’s quite possible that Ms. Harris will meme herself right into the Presidency in just a few short months.
Of course, today’s unquestioning wave of Harris euphoria may backfire on the Dems. Reportedly, Obama himself didn’t support her candidacy, as he believed she’d lose. Regardless, he’s endorsed her now. And only time will tell what the outcome may be.
So at least for now, the Blue State machine is back in order and happily humming forward. And the cultural forcefield of groupthink it generates seems stronger than ever. This makes sense: After all, shutting down the many obvious questions that should have arisen in partisan Democrats’ minds after that debate debacle required an intense level of subliminal psychological force.
Remarkably (or perhaps not), only 20% of Democrats “think there was a coverup of Joe Biden’s health.” But if there were no coverup, then what explains what we saw in that debate — not to mention, the abrupt revision of the “this is the best Biden ever, anything said to the contrary is just right-wing disformation” narrative?
Well of course, that’s easy: Just roll out the new talking points and move on. Case closed.
I know many good people out there are feeling joyously buoyed up by Kamala’s ascension. But I find it dispiriting and disturbing. That’s not so much because of her, per se (although admittedly, I’m not a fan.) Rather, it’s because I believe it’s impossible to have any sort of meaningful democracy in a hivemind culture. And that, I’m sorry to say, is what Blue State America has become.
The purported need to “Save Our Democracy” from the threat of Trump has generated the proverbial cure that’s worse than the disease. Regardless of whatever sincere beliefs and good intentions may have been and remain in play, this one-note crusade has (at least temporarily) destroyed some of the most foundational values of small-”d” democratic culture in Blue State America, including a commitment to journalistic integrity, open inquiry, critical thinking, and public debate.
It wasn’t always like this. And I stubbornly remain hopeful that eventually, things will open up again. For the time being, though, it’s a dismal situation. Winning an election does not a democracy make. And sooner or later, reality does bite back.