Why do you think people are turning away from democracy? Well, you know, this is not a recent phenomenon, right? You know, we’ve seen this happen in, you know, in Germany in the 1940s, right? Where, you know, Hitler was, you know, became a leader under a populist idea. I don’t know enough about the history of Italy, but you know, Mussolini, I suspect, was kind of came about from a similar ideal of populism, telling the people what they want to hear what they think they want to hear, which is really more about consolidating power. Unfortunately, I think Trump is leading down some of those same paths right now in America, telling, you know, particularly poorer people, only I can fix it, only I can help, and they believe it. And so I have to just circle back to education. I think that if we were to truly educate people, now there’s a lot of other problems, of course, with media landscape, with social media, and you know, AI now is changing things. So there’s not one cause here and there’s not one solution. But I do think if we could double down on our commitment to education, then these populist ideals perhaps would not create or would not have as much sway among so many people. Before you do, let me add one more thing real quick, by the way. That’s not to say that only uneducated people are drawn to these ideas of anti-democracy. There are certainly very many smart people as well. And I think that goes a lot to political power, right? So people see the desire for political power. And sometimes that’s through anti-democratic forces. And so we also need to think about what it means to have power in society and, you know, why there’s a benefit to what we call America’s checks and balances, right? Or this diffusion of power not in one individual. So according to you, I mean, what’s mainly driving people away from democracy is that they have some needs which are not fulfilled or as I bet so otherwise they would feel satisfied. And there is one candidate which appeals to what they want to hear. Maybe it’s more populist ideas. And this is what makes people turn away from democracy. I think that’s right. I mean, again, I think there’s multiple causes. I don’t think we can point to one thing. But that summary, I think, is certainly one cause of the turn towards anti-democracy that we’re seeing in many places right now.
#democracy #voting #learning
