I'd also recommend watching Adam Curtis' latest documentary Shifty after reading those, it'll give you a lot to think about.
Replies
Some of the smartest critique I’ve seen in a mighty long time. I’d add the romanticization of alcohol and the propaganda around destroying plant medicine as an actual important factor as well.
jul 23, 2025, 7:14 pm • 0 0 • view
Usually agree. But nowhere do you mention that your "vacuum" (argue it exists as depicted, but let's roll) is hyper-exploited using media 'Wunderwaffe' by hostile State actors who've properly got their anti-democratic act together, aided & abetted by myriad-motivated bad-faith internal actors...
jul 23, 2025, 9:17 am • 0 0 • view
...and our liberal democratic values and how they cope under extreme hostility & duress are so far found severely wanting. You said something about counterpublic. If that means 'illuminatepublic' to 'counterthreats' as a matter of existential urgency, I'm all for it.
jul 23, 2025, 9:18 am • 0 0 • view
You're absolutely right that hostile states and bad-faith internal actors exploit the vacuum, but my argument is that the vacuum itself is the structural problem. It's what allows disinformation, authoritarianism, and anti-democratic coordination to thrive.
jul 23, 2025, 9:22 am • 15 0 • view
We can't just fight back with better counterpropaganda. We need to rebuild the civic, deliberative, and institutional infrastructure that made liberal democracy resilient in the first place, and right now, that’s what’s been hollowed out.
jul 23, 2025, 9:23 am • 23 3 • view
O.K. but you're ignoring the role of cosmopolitan elites - liberals, academics etc i.e. the "good guys" - who have promoted abstract rights over solidarity, the singular over the general (Reckwitz), and the worldview of frequent fliers over those rooted in local communities and traditions (Calhoun).
jul 23, 2025, 12:12 pm • 1 0 • view
I don’t disagree that cosmopolitan liberal actors contributed to the hollowing. Rights abstracted from solidarity, and expertise detached from place, helped weaken the civic foundations they claimed to defend.
jul 23, 2025, 12:19 pm • 4 0 • view
I’m not calling for a restoration of their version of liberalism. I’m arguing for something deeper: rebuilding embedded, participatory civic infrastructure rooted in community, accountability, and deliberation, not just technocratic values or elite universals.
jul 23, 2025, 12:20 pm • 22 1 • view
If anything, the failure you describe is part of the same structural problem: when democracy becomes detached from lived experience, communal ties, and institutional belonging, it collapses into simulation. Reconnection is the point.
jul 23, 2025, 12:20 pm • 18 3 • view
And COVID exacerbated this. I remember the very first call to action after Trump 2.0 was for people to organize IRL. It was a little scary but now I organize a weekly Tesla Takedown, creating community and showing passersby’s this is not normal. Our TT is a dance party which make it all the better💃
jul 23, 2025, 1:14 pm • 2 0 • view
Do you find bringing people together in real-world spaces more effective than purely online activities?
jul 23, 2025, 1:29 pm • 1 0 • view
Populations have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers of democracy rather than as participants. They have collaborated in their own disempowerment. One problem is that the scale of national politics is too great for genuine participation.
jul 23, 2025, 12:46 pm • 1 0 • view
But democracy by very nature is detached from "lived experience", & some halcyon idyll of liberal democracy is far more mythical than rebuildable. E.g. Why do I, dragged up on a northern post-industrial council estate (& patently not elite), mostly concur politically with elite London technocrats?
jul 23, 2025, 12:49 pm • 0 0 • view
I'd argue at every point of liberal existence we need to be vigilant to its systemic threats & alive to the endless & necessary fights to defend it.
jul 23, 2025, 12:51 pm • 1 0 • view
Please keep talking about this. Democracy is compact by a group educated in the meaning and intent of the compact.
jul 23, 2025, 12:22 pm • 3 0 • view
I (genuinely) worry liberal democracy doesn't have the 'minerals' in this moment of determined, concerted, (rich), ruthless & brutal threats to its internal fabric. No matter its civic infrastructure, we liberals need a ruthless streak when pushed this hard. How we play this dichotomy will be key.
jul 23, 2025, 9:46 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 6:52 pm • 0 0 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 1:07 pm • 0 0 • view