It’s of primary importance to assert that the “social” in use here is not that of “socialism” but rather that of “social media.” It’s become a disturbing trend in our culture the amount of times that The Government is referred to as if it’s an individualized entity acting of its own accord. In fact, the government is a large group of people who have been assigned responsibilities and powers considered within our society to be governmental. The boundaries of who exists within the government and who is outside of it can be hard to define, and much of the contemporary discourse centers around where the hard cut-offs on those boundaries should be.
I believe it would be beneficial to start introducing people to their government, meaning the individuals who comprise it. It would be helpful if there was an online hierarchical tree of the various branches and departments. The curious user could interactively click through the Legislative Branch, Executive, Judicial, military powers, various departments, and so on. Each grouping would include a summary of the responsibilities and powers of that particular department. The most important feature would be individual short profiles, ideally written by the individuals themselves, on each person holding a government position. This could include links to public Twitter accounts or other social media if they have them.
I think it’s crucial to start working to dispel the public notion that the government is a faceless entity with certain specifics faces (Clinton, Obama, Warren, Bush, Trump) who work to change it. The government is, in fact, entirely made up of faces without exception, and a resource like the one outlined could help the public to become aware of that. Ultimately, the general public getting riled into a frenzy during an election year over the selection of a single government official is not productive. The presidency is an important position, but it’s far from the only one. Furthermore, I think we need to entirely dispense with the idea that beneficial lasting political change stems out of frenzied crisis. There’s plenty of reasonable dialogue that occurs the rest of the time among both academics and officials, and steps should be taken to make that the crux of political change. Getting the average individual to recognize that their fellow citizens are the ones occupying government positions strikes me as a necessary step in doing so. Without that, I believe the implicit claim becomes that the only viable solution is Plato’s Republic.
Avi Love 