This is the beginning of a quiet rebellion, waged with economics:
The Dallas Morning News is paying a steep price for endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, in the form of canceled subscriptions and loud protests.
The endorsement broke a 75-year streak in the paper’s history of endorsing Republicans, and generated a lot of reader pushback in the form of angry comments and vows to unsubscribe from the paper. Although Dallas is relatively liberal, the state hasn’t gone Democrat in a presidential election in 40 years.
“Certainly we’ve paid a price for our presidential recommendation,” Dallas Morning News editor Mike Wilson said in an email to Poynter. Wilson acknowledged some of that price came in dropped subscriptions, although he declined to reveal to Poynter exactly how many.
Had this not occurred, and the pressure built, it is not impossible it would have ended in a hot rebellion as K-selection sunk in.
As opposition to the wishes of the masses increasingly carries measurable economic cost, the elites will face their greatest threat, especially as we head into K-selection.
It is almost unbelievable that you could theoretically supplant the elites with little more than a vote. I have to think if this continues as it could, it would almost require some sort of countermeasure deployed by the elites, be it election hacking, or something more serious. I cannot imagine that they will surrender their power on some quaint principle like respect for the American electoral system.
It is interesting because if everything is as it seems, this rebellion is almost entirely facilitated by a single man who has an almost savant-like grasp of human psychology, group psychology, and a grasp of the machinations of the media machine.
If he succeeds, I am not sure there would be any real precedent like that.
Pray for his safety.