RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Secrets, Not Constitutional Authority, Are Now the Coin of Power in Politics.

By 2017 it was obvious that the 20th-century institutions were reeling under the impact of the information revolution. The old hierarchies and the authority they had wielded from prestige, authority and celebrity were, if not in a state of collapse, at least badly degraded. The leak of secrets showed how incompetent and mendacious the elites were and the MeToo and Jeffrey Epstein affairs demonstrated how venal.

The last redoubt of establishment legitimacy rested on the claim that it was democratic, protected individual rights against the power of the police; kept the secrets of the ordinary people from any would-be STASI and that the Will of the People as expressed through the ballot box was supreme.

Now, even this last claim has collapsed.

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