There is extreme danger in relying solely on the assertion "Things have ben fine in past times; this is a time, therefore things will be fine." Stable systems are stable until they aren't, and when they aren't the shift to a new stable arrangement tends to be extreme.
> What makes the US so unique is that its laws were put into place by those WHO WERE CONTROLLED
Americans (and I'm including myself here) tend to have a belief in exceptionalism that isn't well-grounded in their own history.
The first thing the Continental Army did after overthrowing the existing power structure was march on western Pennsylvania to put down a tax rebellion. We definitely traded one structure of large-scale control for another. And the nation that came out of that war, while "no longer controlled," still practiced slavery, a practice that was only ended by a second violent upheaval (resulting in a government far more federalized, i.e. centralized, than the one that it replaced... America had tried the experiment of state-level government self-determination and found it extremely wanting).
The United States is, depending on how you slice the concept, two major political-philosophical upheavals away from its roots (the Civil War and the New Deal). We are the same country in terms of continuity but not stasis. A 1776-era revolutionary wouldn't have recognized the America of 1960, let alone today.
> We'll paper over that democracy has become the strongest super power in the world with those very same tenets in place.
Hard disagree, because as I explained, freedom of the press was previously implicitly curtailed by cost of press, exclusivity, and limited reach. Speech was implicitly constrained in the past in ways it no longer is.
This new paradigm is new. It remains to be seen how democracy survives boiling in this pot. It may very well survive! I have not seen a strong argument that doesn't appeal to the past that the survival is likely, let alone guaranteed, and appeals to the past don't work because the Internet is a discontinuity; we have not communicated with each other in this way before.
(... additionally, while the largest superpower is a democracy, the second-largest is an authoritarian one-party socialist-communist republic, so I don't think we can cleanly assert democracy gives automatic supremacy here. I happen to enjoy living under one, personally. I think it has a lot of advantages. Certainly feels good. It's hard to assert it's the only true and virtuous way to be when 18% of the global population might disagree with me.)
My perception is I'm observing extreme changes and hoping democracy does not fail. I grasp for reassurance and all people seem able to give me is "Well, it hasn't failed so far," which is the way people talked about housing prices before the crash.
> What makes the US so unique is that its laws were put into place by those WHO WERE CONTROLLED
Americans (and I'm including myself here) tend to have a belief in exceptionalism that isn't well-grounded in their own history.
The first thing the Continental Army did after overthrowing the existing power structure was march on western Pennsylvania to put down a tax rebellion. We definitely traded one structure of large-scale control for another. And the nation that came out of that war, while "no longer controlled," still practiced slavery, a practice that was only ended by a second violent upheaval (resulting in a government far more federalized, i.e. centralized, than the one that it replaced... America had tried the experiment of state-level government self-determination and found it extremely wanting).
The United States is, depending on how you slice the concept, two major political-philosophical upheavals away from its roots (the Civil War and the New Deal). We are the same country in terms of continuity but not stasis. A 1776-era revolutionary wouldn't have recognized the America of 1960, let alone today.
> We'll paper over that democracy has become the strongest super power in the world with those very same tenets in place.
Hard disagree, because as I explained, freedom of the press was previously implicitly curtailed by cost of press, exclusivity, and limited reach. Speech was implicitly constrained in the past in ways it no longer is.
This new paradigm is new. It remains to be seen how democracy survives boiling in this pot. It may very well survive! I have not seen a strong argument that doesn't appeal to the past that the survival is likely, let alone guaranteed, and appeals to the past don't work because the Internet is a discontinuity; we have not communicated with each other in this way before.
(... additionally, while the largest superpower is a democracy, the second-largest is an authoritarian one-party socialist-communist republic, so I don't think we can cleanly assert democracy gives automatic supremacy here. I happen to enjoy living under one, personally. I think it has a lot of advantages. Certainly feels good. It's hard to assert it's the only true and virtuous way to be when 18% of the global population might disagree with me.)