For all the angst over “saving democracy” this election season, it looks to me like rule by the masses is alive and well. If it weren’t, would anyone sane feel obliged to take notice of a pop star’s views on conflict in the Middle East? Missouri’s darling, Chappell Roan, told the Guardian last month that she won’t endorse Kamala Harris because the vice president, despite her reckless insistence on a ceasefire in Gaza, is too friendly toward Israel for Roan’s taste. The fallout from this momentous statement has been a subject of media controversy for weeks.
I can think of no other explanation for this than that we really are living in the kind of society Plato warned us about in the Ion, where Socrates interviews a matinee idol who sings Homeric poetry for a living and discovers that he genuinely has no thoughts in his head, just feels. Only in a democracy could such people, who combine maximal charisma with minimal information, be a going concern politically. But their fans may vote, so here we are. Clearly, we already have popular sovereignty at home.
Ironically, Roan has fallen afoul of her progressive audience for being too consistently leftist, which sort of tracks for a young woman whose backup dancers joke with her about not knowing how to spell the words “hot” and “go.” Roan has since clarified that she is as “H-O-T T-O G-O” to the polls for Harris as Hillary Clinton’s supporters were to “Pokemon Go to the polls” for her. She explained, however, that “there is no way I can stand behind some of the Left’s completely transphobic and genocidal views.” So she’ll vote, but she can’t in good conscience endorse. She then added, in a manner reminiscent of Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 lamenting the absence of maps in America’s classrooms, “And, more so … Palestine!”
And more so Palestine, indeed. They say that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, which explains why celebrities literally make a living off of sticking resolutely to what they think everyone will like. Roan, whose “Good Luck, Babe!” rose dizzyingly up the charts this year to contend with Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” for the title of Song of the Summer, may need a little more practice at giving the people what they want. She already had to cancel a festival performance in order “to prioritize my health,” which is probably code for distress over the backlash. Then again, drama is attention, so she may yet come out on top.
In any case, she has adopted a slightly different strategy than the manic pixie cat queen Taylor Swift, who endorsed Harris via Instagram, or Hayley Williams of Paramore (remember them?), who informed viewers of the iHeartRadio Music Festival that “Project 2025 is Donald Trump’s playbook for controlling and punishing women, poor people, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community.” The more you know.
It’s probably soft of me, but I feel bad for these women. People obviously enjoy their music (“The Only Exception” was kind of a jam when I was in college, to be honest), and they obviously want (need, desperately!) to be loved. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t delight in their fame among those to whom they bring delight in turn. Nobody said they also needed to be political theorists.
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Except, of course, that Harris needs these ladies’ youth and charm to sustain the illusion that she is anything other than the craven operative of a political machine designed to grind the country’s borders to nothing and feed off its hollow remains. It’s that desperation on the part of a thoroughly astroturfed Democratic campaign, frantically communicated across all media channels by a compliant press, that creates the incentives for pop stars to moonlight as policy analysts.
It’s not a good look for them, and if it succeeds in driving up Harris’s numbers, it won’t be a good look for us, either. We’ll just have to hope most people, in the end, are smart enough to see through this whole dog and pony show — that’s democracy. If you can believe it, it beats all the other options.
Spencer Klavan is an associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books, the host of the Young Heretics podcast, and the author of How to Save the West.