Everybody knows there’s something wrong. The problem isn’t the will or the want. It’s the political system hijacked by a radicalist extremist Republican Party that works for wealthy interests that want to preserve and expand their wealth at the expense of the society they extract their wealth from. When one side of the political system traffics in conspiracies, science/education/expertise denial, hatred, and treason, when one side is interested in allowing companies to dump toxic waste into the drinking water supply instead of building new infrastructure, and takes control of the executive, the legislature, the courts, law enforcement, and the military, it’s no surprise that things that should be done don’t get done. All the writing in the world won’t change the fact that the people who want to get things done aren’t in control, and much of society doesn’t give a damn either, in fact they support self destruction because they’re stupid, no other way to politely cover that up. If they did, we wouldn’t be where we are now. The founders certainly knew this. Let’s be clear: the Republican Party and its millions of voters is the biggest problem by far in this country, and the sooner they are removed from having an ounce of power, the sooner we’ll be on the track to doing any of the ideas listed in the essay (rant). Anyone who has paid close attention to politics in the last 5-10 years knows that there is no shortage of smart and visionary people who want to ‘make the world a better place’ in the Democratic Party, but that they are frustrated and obstructed by the Republican Party at every single turn. A society that elects and continues to allow someone like Donald Trump to be its leader is a society that is so thoroughly fucked. We’ve been stewed in this bullshit for so long that I think we forget just how insane it is that this is the guy who is supposed to lead us, and that millions of people voted for him, and he’s still in charge and no one’s removed him yet. Until the smart and/or good people (of whom I’m sure Andreesen would like to count himself as one) wise up and take action to end the tyranny of the stupid and evil, the leadership and influence of the Republican Party and the voters who comprise it, absolutely nothing will get done. If we think a temporary pandemic is a disaster, just wait for the effects of climate destruction to keep getting worse and worse. Think partially empty grocery shelves for a few months is hard?

It’s difficult. In a relatively democratic system, it tends towards the lowest common denominator. Stupidity is easy to manipulate. Fear and anger and other emotional bases are cheaper and more powerful to inflame than hope and love and reason. Most people are relatively dumb, and when you empower those masses, you don’t get gold from a mountain of crap. You get more crap. Social media has connected the dumb masses together and empowered them. A society full of people so stupid and also connected and empowered in their stupidity is a recipe for disaster in democracy. Is democracy incompatible with progress? Should we die on the altar of democracy and freedom and the supremacy of the individual rather than understand that without the careful pruning of the all powerful gardener, a society will be overgrown and overtaken by weeds when left to its own power? Can a society that’s poisoned by sources on the right wing, whose poison is spread far and wide by the interconnectedness of social media, survive?