"We're trying to build a platform utilizing the Internet that allows the good American people to speak out about their frustration about the polarized country that we live in politically"
About this Quote
A phrase like "good American people" is doing more than praising the public; it is drawing a boundary around who counts as legitimate in the conversation. Hamilton Jordan, a consummate political operator of the Carter era, isn’t describing a neutral tech project so much as trying to rewire political authority at a moment when the old gatekeepers still held most of the microphone. By invoking the Internet as a "platform", he frames technology as a civic utility: not a product, not a party instrument, but an infrastructure for venting and, ideally, reassembling consensus.
The stated intent is modest - let people "speak out" - yet the subtext is strategically ambitious. "Frustration" is treated as a democratic resource, a kind of raw energy that can be collected, displayed, and translated into pressure. That move sidesteps ideology: instead of asking citizens to align on policy, it asks them to align on mood. The word "polarized" works as a shared diagnosis, a way to talk about political conflict without naming culprits, which is useful for someone allergic to sounding partisan.
Context matters here: Jordan is speaking from the long pre-social-media gap between broadcast politics and the participatory Internet we now take for granted. The promise is early digital populism with a procedural sheen - people will be heard, not merely targeted. There’s also an implicit warning: if institutions don’t create channels for expression, anger will find other, less governable outlets. The quote is optimistic in tone, but it carries the operator’s realism: legitimacy can be engineered, and attention can be organized.
The stated intent is modest - let people "speak out" - yet the subtext is strategically ambitious. "Frustration" is treated as a democratic resource, a kind of raw energy that can be collected, displayed, and translated into pressure. That move sidesteps ideology: instead of asking citizens to align on policy, it asks them to align on mood. The word "polarized" works as a shared diagnosis, a way to talk about political conflict without naming culprits, which is useful for someone allergic to sounding partisan.
Context matters here: Jordan is speaking from the long pre-social-media gap between broadcast politics and the participatory Internet we now take for granted. The promise is early digital populism with a procedural sheen - people will be heard, not merely targeted. There’s also an implicit warning: if institutions don’t create channels for expression, anger will find other, less governable outlets. The quote is optimistic in tone, but it carries the operator’s realism: legitimacy can be engineered, and attention can be organized.
Quote Details
| Topic | Internet |
|---|
More Quotes by Hamilton
Add to List
