[zo1]

>"ok, so we've abandoned the notion of objective truth and everything is all about the narrative."

Essentially, yes. Everything is relative, and since we have no base-principles to infer complex laws/rules/behavior from, we're constantly bickering with one another about minute details.

>"the interesting question is whether or not there ever really was a cycle where the citizenry were informed, and could collectively influence policy."

That's an interesting question. I can't say I can think of such a time. But I guess as a seemingly-intelligent and connected society with all of humanity's knowledge available at our fingertips, we should be striving for such a thing. Not defending an already-broken system just because we've decided it's "good enough".

It's nigh-impossible to actually do any sort of "corrective" maintenance on the system we have in place. Just look at Trump, or Brexit. The much-touted "checks and balances" is actively hindering his policies from being enacted (the one that got him voted in). Additionally, with Brexit, it's exposing just how complicated and intertwined global "contracts" and laws are between nations. In both cases we have giant behemoths of laws and processes in place to simply stunt any sort of correction or movement in any direction (whether good or bad). At that glacial pace, I don't think our life-spans are enough to see things through, or see drastic change or experiments when it comes to the models of government we've already-defined and have available.

[PatentTroll]

The checks and balances you deride are not abstract concepts, words do not leap from paper and take action. The checks and balances you disparage are people who disagree, which actually is how it's supposed to work.