The West Wing And The Death Of Belief

In 2003, a reasonable person could watch The West Wing and think, “Yes, this is aspirational, but it’s not fantasy.” The show depicted a political system populated by flawed but fundamentally serious people trying to govern a complex democracy. The characters made mistakes, faced setbacks, and sometimes lost important battles, but the underlying machinery of government functioned according to recognizable principles.

Today, that same reasonable person would watch those episodes and think, “How charmingly naive.” We’ve learned too much about how the sausage actually gets made. We know about the revolving door between government and lobbying, the way campaign finance warps policy priorities, the extent to which regulatory agencies are captured by the industries they’re supposed to oversee. We’ve seen how easily democratic norms are discarded // trashed when they become inconvenient, how quickly institutions will be brutalized and weaponized for partisan advantage.

Pretty much.