American Democracy Will Fail In The Next 30 Years

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I wonder what you guys think on this. Jonathan Haidt generally doesn't stutter, and when the interviewer asked him about this comment (made in a different interview) he reaffirmed that he meant every word of it.

The problem is it seems like runaway emergence, shaped by what you'd have to think of as irrational/inhuman forces. The idea that irrational or inhuman forces have high-hand on culture is nothing new but the horror show really seems to be that we have so much knowledge at this point that even 'knowing better' or being able to see it exactly for what it is seems like it offers no necessary remedy.

It failed long ago. We're just dealing with the symptoms of it now.
In general people don't realize they are in the downward spiral until the flush has completed, but we're definitely circling the drain.

Democracy has been around for a couple hundred years and I have high hopes it will be around for a couple hundred more.

We're being ruled through fear and and ignorance. Jonathan Haidt knows this and is exploiting this knowledge for his own purposes.

Yogi Berra: "Predictions are hard, especially about the future."

I think there's certainly warning signs, and that it certainly feels like we've stepped into the twilight zone. Maybe the country will course correct. A Biden election would bring about a strong return to normalcy. It would be a simultaneous repudiation of the squad and Trumpism. I don't think Biden is the world's greatest candidate by any means, but looking at the alternatives I think he's the best path forward for the country.

I've had Haidt's book recommended to me by some people, and have been meaning to check it out some time.

I don't believe any single president/human being has the power to return to normalcy. The reality is that it's people's perception of Trump far more than his actual policies that create the chaos we have. He truly is in the middle politically just like our last several presidents. The public falsely believing differently than this is more the sign of the root problem.

The fact that the public thinks one person has this much influence is the sign that democracy has already shown failure as it's clear the public thinks they've lost their power.

I should clarify, I don't think it's Biden himself that brings about a return to normalcy, but rather if the people chose Biden over Trump, Sanders, Warren etc. it represents a strong desire to return to normalcy.

Yes, replacing one groper with another will surely signal the return to normalcy.

I think that's just a difference of definitions. The system has been constantly broken and fixed throughout the country's history and there have been plenty of points where it's varied between almost going off the rails and truly going off the rails, there were probably at least three times in the 19th century where this was the case, a couple times in the 20th century, and we're seeing the first major dilemma now of the 21st.

I think there's something to be said about liberalism, by itself, being a centrifugal system that rips apart family, atomizes individuals, and has a way of turning everything into a business contract.

Some people would say that Patrick J. Deneen has a dog in the fight in the way of being pro-religious/pro-Catholic but whether we'd agree with him that religion should be the check or balance against liberalism blossoming into a sort of sociopathic global neoliberalism I still don't think his analysis is too far of in that something bordering on a combination of plutocracy and anarcho-capitalism is what happens when liberalism is left to answer to nothing else:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/201 ... gnoble-lie

It sounds like you're making an allegation that Haidt's motivations are cynical. Can you unpack that a bit?

I think Timur Kuran in his interview with Eric Weinstein (The Portal #004) diagnosed this accurately, that what makes Trump different is that he's not tied down to the same interests that most of DC is and even if he's a narcissist and serving himself he's doing damage to something people have come to regard as sort of a 'lawful evil' that protects its own interests and of which no candidates or politicians have been able to do much of anything about. Hillary would have been more of the heat getting turned up on the lobster pot and 2020 might have had far worse fallout than a 2016 Trump election.

I have to disagree with Antrax on this one as well - I worry about Biden the way I worry about a lot of the more formal boomer-friendly candidates in the Democratic party because they've got wonderful 20th century solutions to 21st century problems, boomers who haven't bothered to keep up with current events or who don't consume anything that isn't heavily predigested or filtered (or worse - they're Fox or CNN viewers) will go with "Hey.... I know that name!", and it'll be a pyrrhic victory that ushers in a right-wing populist in 2024.

Could very well be. There's a reason I led off with the Yogi Berra quote. I think making Trump a 1-term president would temporarily neutralize the populist right.

I do feel that Democracy has been bought off and void for many years, however at the local level it isn't so clear. The bigger levels, we have a system called corporate fascism, where the rich will buy democracy in their favor. The standard of living has been decreasing for the average American, and I assume it'll continue to decrease until America is a 3rd world and only the rich and powerful own 99% of wealth like what the plan was to begin with. Democracy in theory is great, however it's not possible in a corrupted country.

I was watching Andrew Yang's discussion and Q&A at NHU Law from last Friday and something that even further renewed my respect for him - he was asked about the problems of money in DC buying representatives and senators who were looking for reelection or people coming out of DC as lobbyists and his answers were game-theoretical rather than centered around drafting legislation against corruption and he indicated an understanding that money will have the best lawyers available and will always find its way around laws.

One of his ideas was give every US citizen $100 dollars that can only be used as a donation to the candidate or candidates of their choice. We have over 250 million voting age adults in the US so that would translate to a pool of over 25 billion that the public would have power over and with that money they'd have much more real pull on that basis. I don't know if that's the only answer but I'd agree that rearranging the money would help make politicians a lot more expensive for special interests.

Yuval harari at one point said that being useless is far worse than being oppressed - amd I think that's where we're headed: large swaths of mankind becoming redundant in the production process, and economically disenfranchised. And politics has handed over power to economics long ago - so, demicracy might heal itself, but ot might just not matter.

Biden or some other normal person could calm down the hysterical 'liberals', but that won't give former coal miners a job or a feeling of purpose.

That makes me wonder if we shouldn't be pushing technology, whether out of brilliant open-hearted philanthropy or simple revenge, to make every human advantage - wealth, high intelligence, great artistic skills, redundant so that no super-class with the self-given right to liquidate all other life can get a proper foothold. It's far better if 100% of people are made useless than 90-95%.