One of the useful things developed by economics is the concept of revealed preference, which states that behavior is the best indicator of preference. This was first formulated by the neo-Keynesian economist Paul Samuelson as an observation about consumer behavior. All else being equal, people will reveal their true preferences by how they choose to spend their money for goods and services.

This is one of those bits of old wisdom that everyone knew and then suddenly forgot when it came to economics. It required a lot of suffering to remember it again. It turns out that human progress is a great leap in technology along with a period of amnesia with regards to the human condition. What follows is a long painful process of remembering those truths that the prior age took for granted.

We are in one of those periods again. The microprocessor unleashed a torrent of technological change. Much of it was ornamental, but some of it was truly novel, which triggered our collective amnesia about the human condition. It seems ridiculous now, but at the dawn of the internet age people thought it would usher in the long-promised age of democratic tranquility and equality.

“There is nothing more frightening to the beautiful people than having their illusions of themselves lampooned by the hoi polloi.”

Instead, America has become despotic and authoritarian. If you could transport fascists from a century ago to this age, they would assume that fascism had carried the day in the great ideological wars of the 20th century. Everything in American life is now controlled by a partnership between capital and the state. The one puzzle would be the labor chair occupied by the blue-haired Antifa harpy ranting about trans rights.

It took until 1938 for industrial-age man to remember what people knew since the time of Christ: that deeds matter more than words. At the late stages of the microprocessor revolution, we are learning that lesson again. It is not what people say that matters, but how they act. Their behavior reveals what they really think and what they prefer and not just in their consumer activity.

When the court ruled that the Florida Democratic Party was not allowed to change the election rules to give the presidency to Al Gore, the beautiful people went bonkers, claiming it was a threat to our democracy. What they really meant was that it was a win for those dirty Christians they hate so much, but that is too on the nose. Instead, they said Bush winning an election was a threat to democracy.

That should have been a warning about the whole democracy business. Eight years later a complete nobody won the White House and we were told that it was a triumph of democracy. Eight years after that, one of the most famous people in the world beat one of the most hated people in the world and they said that was an existential threat to democracy, one that required rigging the next election to save democracy.

That was the problem; it did not take too long before the beautiful people noticed that the rubes in flyover country were good at mocking their betters. The Great Awokening was a response to the great digital awakening. Suddenly the Dirt People could see that their betters among the Cloud People were callow simpletons. Better yet, they could easily let those callow simpletons know it in 150 characters.