Crisis of Legitimation

Yurgen Habermas wrote a book called The Crisis of Legitimation which answered a lot of questions about liberal governmentality. I found my copy left in a motel room in Jackson Montana. The thesis of the book is that liberal capitalist "democracy" is fragile and rests on a thin veneer of legitimacy. Much like the stock market, the whole ediface requires consumer confidence. To maintain legitimacy with the public, the system must appear to uphold certain norms, certain traditions should be maintained, certain expectaitions met. Hegemony (the abscence of overt coercion) rests on this constructed consensus; shelves must remain stocked, the trains should run on time. In the liberal order citizens expect to exercise certain rights and above all private proprety rights must be sacred. But of course, as times change, norms shift. To the degree that consent is manufactured, that factory has to put in increasing amounts of overtime as the intersecting crises deepen. And while I still believe a point exists at which legitimacy would be thoroughly undermined, I am less and less sure it necessarily leads to revolt. It might just be that the population collectively disassociates from reality and accepts the simulation in the place of the real thing. Or it might be that all resistance is channeled into harmless protest and eventual cynicism. Drinking is a popular option. Beyond maintaining train schedules and protecting property, a legitimate government must protect certain interests,what the constitution refers to as the "general welfare", and safeguard enough "liberty" that enough of the population will grant it the exclusive right to use force. There must be a degree of equality and safety and a political sphere in which decision making takes place in some transperant fashion. The increasingly urgent question is: how far can these norms break down before the legitimacy of power is questioned? We know people have an amazing capacity for prefering illusion over reality. The Left has a relationship to psychoanalysis ,not shared by the Right, because "rational actor" theory fails to explain so much of everyday experience, including a willingness to legitimize irrational systems and oppresive institutions. What we see on the surface is again, a tremendous ability to adapt, to revise norms and consnt to madness.