zlacker

>>alwill+(OP)
It's a mantra at this point that polarization has gotten out of control, but one of the biggest effects it seems to have is this reverse-psychology effect

I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies.

I remember when there was that controversy about 5G networks interfering with bird migration patterns and meteorology, but as the fringe conspiracy crowd started spinning up crazy theories about how 5G was going to brainwash or sterilize or force-feminize people over the airwaves or whatever it was, most people I knew stopped talking about it, seemed to forget that they had ever thought it concerning. It reminded me of the time people were worried about pollutants causing hormonal changes in indicator species, and then Alex Jones started talking about how "they're turning the frogs gay" and the meaningful version of that discourse vanished too.

I view the same kind of thing as happening here, as well as a lot of other places. It's made me wary of the sport of finding what crazy things my political enemies believe to make fun of them, because it seems like the net effect of this is creating "opposite" erroneous beliefs with no evidence

>>advael+ga1
Everyone's a reactionary.

>>iammis+UQ1
It's an important statement, but because it's the self-justifying propaganda of reactionaries. People work together and get things done; I see it all the time; in fact, that's how democracies - by far the most successful form of government in human history - that's how they work.

>>wolver+z52
How could you possibly say democracy is the most successful government system in history? There is little reason to believe that. These sorts of kitschy phrases being substituted for real discourse is why were here.

Democracy is nice, but historically it leads to very bad outcomes in a few hundred years. What remains to be seen is whether or not this democracy will sustain itself.

>>iammis+f92
It is the most stable form of governance that doesn't require subjugation of citizens and has the ability to self-correct because election disallow personal

Democacies are indeed young so I don't get your point that it will lead to something "very bad".

>>raxxor+ig2
Democracies are not 'young'. Rome was a democracy for four hundred years before falling into autocracy and empire. As was Athens and some other Greek cities. Many 'barbarian' tribes were democracies as well. Democracy is not something invented in 1776. All experiments in democracy have so far failed. Most fail spectacularly and devolve into authoritarianism (see the 1st French Republic). There has never been a long-sustained democratic government. The most stable forms of government is a representative monarchy or an empire. In 2066, the monarchy of England will celebrate 1000 pretty-much contiguous years. There are actually monarchies that have lasted longer (like the Eastern half of the roman empire which lasted more than 1500 years, as well as the pharaohs of Egypt or the empires of China). There is no democracy that has lasted that long. And to say that the English monarchy requires 'subjugation of its citizens' is quite silly, or even that the Roman empire under Caesar required constant human rights abuses of its citizens (it didn't... roman citizens had lots of rights we enjoy today).

Look.... I believe in democracy, but I don't have a religious fervor over it. I am shocked when my fellow Americans seem so unschooled in basic history. Indeed, many of the undemocratic things put into our constitution (like the much maligned electoral college) were put there by our founders hoping to avoid the pitfalls of democracy. They were very aware that democracy typically fails spectacularly, and put in many anti-democratic things into the constitution to avoid it.