The Midterm Elections: A Philosophical Postmortem

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo discuss the midterm elections and offer a philosophical analysis of the state of American politics.

Among the topics covered:

The value of analyzing the midterms from a long-term, philosophical perspective;
Why the results in Georgia are an encouraging sign about the mindset of independent voters;
The absence of long-term policy visions on key issues such as pandemic preparedness, inflation, and foreign policy;
How today’s intellectual vacuum represents a degeneration compared to 1980s, 1990s and 2000s;
The fact that today’s politicians don’t feel the need to even attempt to formulate policies;
How the increasingly short-term, concrete-bound and tribal nature of American politics affects citizens’ ability to regard government officials as their representatives;
How American politics became so intellectually empty;
How religionists and democratic socialists are related to the anti-intellectual trend;
Why voters generally have better views than many of today’s candidates;
The importance of supporting better candidates when they come along.

Mentioned in the discussion are Ayn Rand’s lecture “The Age of Mediocrity,” Ben Bayer’s book Why the Right to Abortion Is Sacrosanct, and Onkar Ghate’s article “One Small Step for Dictatorship.”

This episode was recorded on November 10, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch previous episodes here.