| I don't understand why this exact pattern of argument happens so much in online debate, but I really despise it. Acrobatic_Road makes a reasonable point that they don't feel they were given the proper means to express their policy preferences, and reasonably calls it 'undemocratic'. After all the reason we want democracy in the first place is so that ordinary citizens can influence the policy. Chillwaves reasonably points out that America is a representative democracy and so you vote for candidates whom you trust to vote in accordance to your policy preferences. That's two great points! We should be able to have an interesting discussion right? For example we could discuss ways in which the US system of representative democracy is failing Acrobatic_Road. We could also discuss why we might like it despite its failings. But for some reason, online debate seemingly always end up in an inane discussion debating definitions with one side claiming X is not truly Y while the other side claims X lives up to standard definition of Y. Nobody is any smarter. We entirely failed to learn anything from each others perspective. We can be better than this :( |