Impatient for change
In a society where everything is instant, government stays slow
SEVENTY YEARS ago, Americans found themselves in the depths of despair. The economy had crashed, unemployment was at 25 percent, people lined up at bread lines and soup kitchens, and nearly everyone was reeling in anxiety at what the future held for them. But as dire as things were, few Americans expected an immediate remedy. What they expected was some sort of action. Franklin Roosevelt first boosted morale by promising to tackle the problem and then set about on a long course to do just that — a course that wouldn’t conclusively end until World War II. Through it all, the country by and large demonstrated extraordinary maturity and patience. It persevered.
In our current economic travails, the public attitude is strikingly different. Americans want the economic disaster to be over now, and we are angry that it isn’t. We don’t have time for financial reforms or pump-priming or a long-term transformation to a green economy. We expect a magic wand. And who can blame us? Unlike our forebears, we live in a society in which nearly everything happens instantly. Impatience is the new American way.
It has been nearly a decade since James Gleick described in his book “Faster’’ how everything in society was accelerating. Since then, things have only gotten, well, faster. No one waits anymore, except maybe at
But what has largely gone unnoticed is that speed has also changed our political psychology. It isn’t just that folks register instant opinions or receive instant information or form instant groups of like-minded individuals or make instant contributions. There is a deeper impact with potentially a much greater consequence — namely, that we have become profoundly impatient with the pace of political change.
Technology didn’t create impatience. Instead, impatience created new technologies. Indeed, one of the byproducts of an increasingly democratized society in which more and more people have the vote and other opportunities to voice their concerns is a sense of entitlement, and one of the things to which we believe we are entitled is action so that we won’t be wasting our time. So much of our technology — from cellphones to Tivo to Ipods to Ipads — is a response to our desire for instant gratification in a society that encourages us to feel that way. We want what we want and we want it now.
Speed and a sense of confident alacrity certainly have their advantages, but when it comes to politics they can be counterproductive. For one thing, speed discourages consideration. It is doubtful that there was any time in American history when ordinary citizens engaged in deep political discourse, but when most news and opinion is dispensed in short, predigested bites, there is nothing upon which to ruminate. The effect is Pavlovian. Trigger words like “death panels’’ or “socialism’’ that evoke immediate responses replace substantive debate.
But a more important consequence of speed for politics is that it creates expectations that the political system cannot possibly meet. The problem is that while everything else in society keeps getting faster, government has always been slow. The Founding Fathers designed it that way. Operating in an unhurried and cautious society, they wanted an unhurried and cautious government — one that wouldn’t be affected by . . . impatience. As we’ve seen all too clearly and frustratingly, it chugs along, deliberating, negotiating, compromising, backtracking, while problems fester.
The point isn’t that our system of government isn’t nimble enough for an age of rapid response, though that is unfortunately true. The point is that there is a major disconnect between a new political psychology of instant gratification and the stubborn intransigence of life, between an increasingly impatient society and a government that can’t deliver results quickly enough.
In the short run, this has erupted in understandable frustration and anger and a desire to turn out the party in power. In the long run, it may lead to something much more dramatic; because when the popular culture promises what the political culture cannot produce, the temptation is to try to change the political culture into the popular culture. We want a hero who gives us instant results — a President Iron Man. And there is likely to be a good deal of turbulence unless we find one — not the turbulence of populism or Tea Baggerism or left-wing disappointment, but the turbulence that comes from our newfound impatience.
Neal Gabler is the author of “
