[seanmcdirmid]

It’s weird because Trump emboldens the far left locally. Here in Seattle, we have some crazy city council members that can only get elected when Trump is President (it’s been drifting right since the end of Trump’s last term). Turns out leftist anarchy-liberal movements are fueled by rightist authoritarian-conservative movements as well. And some of us really want moderates running things, not extremists on either side.

[JumpCrisscross]

Extremist partisans fuelling each other is a sign of too much democracy. We’ve known this since the Athenians. The solution may be in slowing down the signal transmission between base population, elites and policy.

[s1artibartfast]

I tend to agree that speed is a key issue, but so is bandwidth.

Democracy by itself is meaningless and valueless. It becomes useful or not based on the systems, institutions, expectations it mediates.

I think that with the advent of digital media, many parts of the system have (specifically parts of the electorate) been rendered non-functional by overload. With a firehose of issues, there is insufficient time for organization, solution seeking, and consensus building.

So yes, slow down the signal, but also prioritize to prevent political and cultural DDOS.