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Full Article: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/08/shawn-rosenberg-democracy-228045

We've talked about the decline of democracy in several other threads over the past few years, but this paper goes on to predict that in the coming years many democracies will end, and many more will be shells of their former selves. According to the paper, the problem is that humans aren't designed well for self-rule, especially in that people want to look for simple answers to their problems such as those offered by nativism and racism rather than more complicated solutions that involve tolerance, compromise, and understanding. This has become more apparent in an era where the social media has risen and the power of elites that the paper argues kept the democracies together before.

What are your thoughts?

There is quite a lot I dislike about this article. It is a rather paternalistic, elitist and anti-democratic argument at its core.

First, distrust in the 'elites' did not come out of nowhere. This distrust can largely be traced back to several things, the biggest ones being (at least in the US) Iraq, Afghanistan and The Great Recession. Mistakes by the 'elites' this guy just brushes past while waxing lyrical about the 'good old days when the proper people were in charge'.

This entire argument by this guy is rather insulting, to be frank, it basically reads like a manifesto for autocratic paternalism. He might as well have gone on the stage and said "The problem with democracy are all these rubes, these stupid people voting like they deserve a say! It would be much better to concentrate power in the hands of the learned few, like myself, where we can be unshackled from the petty concerns of the common man." It's just Sukarno's idea of guided democracy and it is just as much of a hypocritical sham.

This whole article just rather annoys me, to be frank.