Comment by simgt
21 hours ago
Citation very much needed ;) Even our current voting systems are far from being the best we can come up with in term of fairness. The population most certainly wants to remain in an environment humans can comfortably live in, somehow that's not what our democracies are selecting for these days.
In fairness while people do obviously want them they also want all the current conveniences of modern life and more. Completely off the cuff but I'm pretty sure the sum of those desires vastly dwarfs concern over longer term environmental effects. Essentially I think the average joe prioritizes their job and lifestyle over nagging climate concerns just like the gov does.
Yet people actively decided as they did, while almost fully knowing where it leads. It could also have been worse given progressing senility, attempt to overthrow government etc. We are not in a new territory after all, just continuation. Tariffs are new mexican wall.
At least accept how your nation thinks on average, no weaseling around simple fact of today's reality.
I don't know what kind of citation you expect. It's clear that political participation was never more direct and organized than now in the age of social media. The fools and resentful who always were numerous have found a way to unite and bypass the establishment and educational filters which were effectively restraining politics before. All the cowards, short termists, wannabe dictators, conspiracists and anti-intellectualists who are being elected squarely and fairly represent the people who voted for them.
I'm not from the US and I'm not arguing that the current US gov wasn't elected fairly. It's not a law of physics that leaders of democracies do what the people want, they are selected by a system that was designed to estimate the preference of a population (more likely the preference of the ones who designed it). A democratic system designed differently would have a different outcome, there are good examples of what happens when the system favors consensus for instance [0][1], albeit not at the same scale.
[0] https://democracy-technologies.org/participation/consensus-b...
1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_for_Climat...