[amilein7minutes]

What strikes about the theory Lippmann develops in this piece back in 1919, is that the entire argument remains coherent and powerful just as is, a hundred years later in 2019. In the meantime, various implementations of democracy across the world (differing in the way the elections are held, the distribution of power between the legislature, executive and the judiciary and the elections of those etc) have all pretty much encountered the same faultlines emerging.

By that I mean that the majority votes based on a confused jumble of propaganda and misinformation and this voting pattern has not produced the best outcome for 1) the protection of the minorities and 2) solving problems that impact every individual, that also require collective effort, such as climate change and poverty.

While Lippmann blames the impossibility of gleaning facts from the "inconceivable confusion" that is presented to the common person -- and this problem has only become much worse in 2019, given the ease of access to opinions in the internet age -- is it possible that fake news to undermine democracy is an inevitable feature? In other words, is it possible that even if everyone was presented with crystal clear facts, they would not become rational agents? That the opinion of the masses will still converge to something based on external variables rather than facts?

The article gives the impression that once the problem of misinformation is eliminated, the democratic model will truly achieve liberty, as Lippmann defines it, but it does not seem rational to subscribe to this belief, simply because there is no historical precedent (fake news and propaganda are as old as democracy itself and the information age has merely provided infrastructural strength for its spread) and if we were being factual/Bayesian, there is no reason to believe in the redemption of democracy in the absence of misinformation.