The now 2-decade-long rise of social media platforms as a arena for political discourse has reshaped the foundations of public governance. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter/X, along with partisan newcomers like Truth Social, transformed how citizens receive information, how political narratives are constructed, and how public policy debates unfold. This shift, while democratizing access to communication, has also introduced profound challenges for the effective administration of government programs.

A striking example can be seen in the aftermath of a viral video by influencer Nick Shirley, which alleged widespread fraud in government-funded daycare programs. Despite substantive evidence countering many of the video’s claims, its reach—amplified by political figures and shared across platforms—contributed to the Trump Administration freezing billions in federal social welfare funding to multiple states last week. These decisions, driven in part by unverified online content, demonstrate how quickly social media narratives can influence the priorities and operations of public institutions.

This dynamic feeds into a broader crisis of trust exacerbated by persistent falsehoods surrounding the 2020 presidential election. Former President Trump’s continued promotion of the “Big Lie”—the unfounded claim that the election was stolen (culminating in the January 6th insurrection, the 5th anniversary of which we observe yesterday)—has not only eroded confidence in electoral integrity but has also strained governmental legitimacy. When significant segments of the population doubt the foundational processes of democracy, it becomes much harder for government to marshal broad support for long-term social welfare initiatives or emergency responses. Together, the Big Lie and Big Social Media have created a new center of American culture: The Lie Factory. Sound familiar?

The mechanism underlying this culture shift is twofold. First, social media’s architecture accelerates the spread of misinformation, rewarding sensationalism and polarizing content over verified facts. This undermines the public’s ability to make informed judgments about policy and governance. Second, the political exploitation of unverified narratives—whether about elections or social programs—diverts administrative attention away from substantive policymaking toward reactive, often symbolic, actions. Republican’s have been keen to follow (and innovative) this method under Trump. Together, these trends weaken the capacity of federal and state governments to design, implement, and sustain effective social welfare programs that meet real public needs. Perhaps this is collateral damage from the Trump Administration reshaping the government in the image of personal profit and imperial ambitions, or perhaps it is the very point of it all.

For democratic governance to function effectively in the digital age, it is imperative that both social media platforms and political leaders take responsibility for the quality of public discourse. Without a recommitment to truth and institutional credibility, the ability of government to serve its citizens through robust social welfare systems will continue to be compromised.

Yikes.

2025 marks the end of many norms for American life, but perhaps none more so than the end of a once-sacred institution: the President as a moral leader.

The American presidency has long been sustained not only by constitutional authority, but by a shared commitment to legal restraint, institutional respect, and civic norms. Under Donald Trump’s leadership, this commitment has repeatedly been weakened . . and we’re only one year into his second term.

This year was not merely an unconventional presidency, but a sustained challenge to the legal, governmental, and cultural foundations that lend the office its legitimacy.

Legally, Trump treats the rule of law as an obstacle rather than a governing principle. He regularly attacks judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials when their actions conflict with his personal or political interests. The routine independence of the Justice Department—an essential safeguard against executive abuse—was openly questioned and, at times, undermined. Presidential pardons, traditionally used as instruments of mercy or reconciliation, were reframed as tools of loyalty and reward.

From a governmental standpoint, Trump blurs critical boundaries between public office and private interest. Norms surrounding transparency, conflicts of interest, and ethical accountability are dismissed as optional or partisan inventions. Career civil servants and intelligence professionals are disparaged or purged for perceived disloyalty, weakening the nonpartisan expertise upon which effective governance depends. The presidency increasingly functioned as a personal platform rather than a constitutional role embedded within a system of checks and balances.

Culturally, the damage may be most enduring. The office of the president historically served as a symbol of American freedom and power, even within a deeply partisan landscape. Trump instead normalized contempt for democratic processes, the press, and political opponents. Truth itself has become a target of his ire, replaced by performative outrage and relentless misinformation. Respect for electoral outcomes—arguably the cornerstone of democratic legitimacy—have been publicly rejected when proved inconvenient.

The collapse, then, is not of the presidency’s formal powers (indeed, quite the opposite on that front), but of the norms that give those powers meaning. Institutions can survive breaches of decorum; they struggle to endure sustained assaults on legitimacy itself. The long-term cost of Trump’s presidency may lie not in any single policy or scandal, but in the precedent that governance without restraint, respect, or accountability is acceptable. And I believe the biggest cost of this erosion will be the loss of moral authority—the authority that American relies on to do good at home and around the world.

Instead, we have a new (if temporary) figure: the President as Fleecer-in-Chief. If the point in undermining moral authority wasn’t an end in itself, then it was apparently for the purpose of creating a self-aggrandizing and greed-driven presidency. A presidency where every action creates an opportunity for private (and family) profit. A presidency where every institution is a branding opportunity, not for the country, but for the MAGA-made man.

Rebuilding the American presidency will require more than a change in leadership—it will require a renewed commitment to the norms that once made the office worthy of trust.

I love this simple break-down from Business Insider:

Meritocracy is a popular nonfiction topic these days, with Sandel’s book published on the heels of Markovits’ 2019’s “The Meritocracy Trap“. Indeed the backlash against so-called elitism gives us a lot to think about.

Reflecting on meritocracy in general (and technocracy in particular), I am reminded of Churchill’s remark that “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”

Sandel outlines some really damning outcomes of the rise of meritocracy and the “rhetoric of rising” in the U.S. For me, foremost on the list is the rising fiscal inequality that benefits from our broad acceptance of meritocracy, and acquiescence to all its forms (e.g., across diverse domains). High academic achievement, he argues, has become a basis of meritocratic hubris. Having rooted itself in our schools and universities, this by-product of education has been cashed out as an all-encompassing ticket to wealth accumulation.

The singularly-American obsession with self-made wealth has fused with academic achievement. This has led to a broad deterioration of our mid-20th century, quasi-egalitarian social fabric – the weakening of our ability to communally value goods that exist apart from academic achievement. But what, we might ask, are those?

Academic achievement has become expansive in an interesting (if confounding) way. Reading, writing, and arithmetic have been foundational to public education for about 150 years. And one might add religion. But the study and practice of the visual arts, music, and athletics have all come under the umbrella of formal education as well, to say nothing of the social sciences and related humanities sub-disciplines. Colleges and universities have become all-encompassing amalgams of evaluation and accreditation. Almost anything humans celebrate as worth doing has been incorporated into the curriculum.

And so, education has become a proxy and a symbol for doing anything seriously. The obvious cause of this is that we are taking our activities seriously: discussing, researching, evaluating, and sharing our actions and beliefs in every domain we can. On the face of it, this seems like a wonderful trend. But Sandel and others have revealed the folly of this path: negative feedback loops. A resentful underclass. A self-assured-yet-neurotic elite. And growing inequality.

What kind of correctives can allow us to keep the benefits of comprehensive education but mitigate the negative outcomes?

As Sandel notes, the so-called liberal elite have promoted the solution of more education for half a century. Higher education for all. Lifelong training (and retraining). Career pathways. But he suggests this path has deepened political divisions by doubling-down on education without improving social and economic outcomes for most. The political and economic problems of the present therefore point us to wealth redistribution as a solution. Notably, the solution of taxing the rich and creating educational opportunities for the poor fits this model perfectly.

If increasing educational opportunities for all is a minimal approach, then the fantasy of a social state is the strong one. But the solution of taxing the rich so as to entirely remove economic inequality clearly collides with our collective “dream” of self-reliance, to say nothing of our collective fantasies about capitalism. This tension arguably forms one of the deepest divisions between “conservative” and “liberal” approaches to governance.

What else can be done? What about the possibilities for reengineering education itself?

There are many visions of education that do not reify the value of grades and ranked outcomes – those special distillations of education that are bound up in capitalist fantasies of competition and financial success. Can we build a new foundation of collaborative action? Can we be guided by vision of collective success and shared outcomes?

To do so would be to embark on a mission to simultaneously recreate constraints for capitalism that betray our shared values that led us to educational excellence in the first place: curiosity, discovery, and knowledge. To do so would be to exit the casino and join cooperative projects. This is happening all around us, of course – the future that’s here, but unequally distributed. If it’s happening both with and without education, how can we shine a stronger light on it? Can we trace it as a solution to our meritocratic ills?

To take this path is a leap of faith. Choosing collective outcomes over individual ones. This chafes with our current capitalist optimism. It presents us with an even greater reckoning:

Can we live under the tyranny of shared endeavors, but still experience freedom as the well-educated wealthy elite now ostensibly enjoy? How long will it take us to reimagine so-called freedom as such?

As Naomi Klein eloquently states in her book The Shock Doctrine, social and political instability has been used to push anti-government agendas. This has been very bad for liberal democracy in America, especially during the past 40 years. Now, with a global pandemic surging in America, related economic strife, heightened partisan rancor, and an upcoming election that is bound to test our trust of democratic systems, will instability develop into a breakdown of democratic systems? (And would this be the culmination of 40 years of Neoliberalism or the end thereof?)

Discussions about a “Second Civil War” are alarming (to say the least), and appear to be predominantly emanating from so-called “right-wing Bugaboo” movement, fueled by grassroots Qanon conspiracy pushers, big media like Fox News, and the Republican Administration’s blatant promotion of militarism and white, patriarchal nationalism. Add to this America’s nearly 400,000,000 guns in the hands of its citizens, and the idea of “war” suddenly seems more concrete than merely rhetorical.

But is it enough to break down American democracy to the point of irreparable procedural damage?