democratic communities

So what exactly was the so-called democratization of media going to accomplish, in terms of the country’s political life? We now know the answer: It was going to widen the gap between the pseudo-environments in which people think and feel and the real environment in which they live and act. It was going to reveal a fundamental paradox of modern... See more

We construct our pseudo-environment out of what Lippmann termed stereotypes. When confronted by “the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world,” we have to rely on rules of thumb, intuitive judgments, and other mental shortcuts—heuristics, as cognitive psychologists call them—to make sense of things. We comprehend through intuition... See more

The problem isn’t just that people deliberately lie, spreading disinformation for personal or political gain. It’s that the public sphere has shattered into competing publics, each able to ignore the others. If you’re a vaccine denier, your social-media feed is full of other vaccine deniers, so your beliefs are always affirmed, never challenged.... See more

To some, the precariousness of the current moment seems frightening, and yet this uncertainty has always been there. The liberalism of John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, or Václav Havel never promised anything permanent. The checks and balances of Western constitutional democracies never guaranteed stability. Liberal democracies always demanded

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They wanted to build democracy in America on the basis of rational debate, reason, and compromise. But they had no illusions about human nature: They knew that men could sometimes succumb to “passions,” to use their old-fashioned word. They knew that any political system built on logic and rationality was always at risk from an outburst of the

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Beneath this is an important principle: Conversation is not a reward to be bestowed on those with whom we agree; it’s a necessary habit in a democracy. The point is not to find agreement so much as to deepen understanding. To talk with others is to believe in the possibility of change — theirs and your own. Whether you like everything that someone... See more

“Gather together, find your footing and your story.” That is the advice I have been giving for two decades about how to stay out of shock during moments of collective trauma. Metabolize the shock together, I would tell people, create meaning together. Resist the tin-pot tyrants who will tell you that the world is now a blank sheet for them to write

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