#democracy — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #democracy, aggregated by home.social.
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Why Democracy?
If, as I argued in my previous post, all People Should Be Equal in Rights and Respect, then they should have equal say in the structure, processes and rules of the society they live in. They should have equal power in society. That is what democracy is: “power to the people”.
The arguments against democracy usually take the form of pointing out that “the mob” (that’s us) do not have the information or intelligence to make decisions affecting other people.
A stronger argument is that there is a risk of the majority making decisions that take away the rights of others with no justification beyond their numbers. For example, enslavement.
But that is only an argument in favour of making the institutions of democracy proof against majoritarian harm of others’ rights and freedoms. A typical western representative democracy does not do that but that is just an argument to change the systems.
People don’t have the education or information? Fix the education and information systems.
People don’t have time or opportunity to learn and participate? Make sure people don’t have to use all their time working; provide citizens’ assemblies in which they can participate.
People are mean and cruel and will take the rights of others if they can? This is a harder one’; we’ve tried to solve the crime aspect of this with police and prisons, and that doesn’t work at all. Some of this can be fixed by education and more can by participation so that they come to see other people as equals. The biggest reason that this is a challenge is the people currently in a position of power who work hard to divide us with anti-immigrant, anti-trans, anti-everyone-but-cis-white-men propaganda, but the mere fact that they have to work so hard on that shows that we can do much, much better.
Part two of a series on democracy.
#democracy -
TWO THOUSAND YEARS,
SAME OLD PROBLEM 💎I was thinking about the Orange Man this morning, and suddenly I thought of Caligula. Not because they are the same man. They aren’t. Different centuries, different political systems, different circumstances. But two thousand years separate them, and an uncomfortable question remains.
WHY DO HUMAN BEINGS KEEP GIVING THEIR POWER TO MEN WHO ARE SO OBVIOUSLY UNSUITED TO HOLD IT?
We have history. We have education. We have constitutions, courts, elections, and institutions specifically designed because generations before us discovered what happens when too much power gathers around one person.
AND STILL WE ARE FASCINATED BY THE ORANGE MAN.
The certainty. The performance. The insults. The promise that complicated problems have simple answers and that somebody else is responsible for everything that has gone wrong.
Perhaps that is the part we haven’t outgrown. Powerful men come and go. The human appetite for them seems remarkably durable. But there is one small piece of this I can actually control.
MY ATTENTION.
I don’t have to watch every speech. I don’t have to play every outrageous clip. I don’t have to spend another morning being furious about what the Orange Man said yesterday.
BEING INFORMED MATTERS.
Being permanently occupied by him does not. Caligula has been dead for nearly two thousand years.
THE ORANGE MAN DOESN’T GET MY MORNING.
@3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @startrek
#Politics #Democracy #Power #History #Attention #Caligula #Trump #UnitedStates #orange #history #control #dead #ATTENTION
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Don’t let the Iran war distract the United States from Africa
Executive summary …
#NewsBeep #News #BreakingNews #Africa #AfricaGrowthInitiative #Article #breakingnews #Conflict #Crisis&ConflictManagement #Defense&Security #Democracy #Foreignpolicy #ForeignPolitics&Elections #GlobalEconomy&Development #GlobalEconomyandDevelopment #GlobalTrade #Governance #InternationalAffairs #Iran #MiddleEast&NorthAfrica #Research #U.S.Economy #U.S.foreignpolicy #U.S.TradePolicy
https://www.newsbeep.com/708193/ -
Call your reps every day! So let's check in our list today. (thanks to https://www.5calls.org/ )
* It's time to Impeach Trump.
* Oppose Heidi Overton for FDA
* Reinstate the FDA safety protocols
* Abolish ICE - and restrain their tactics while we do so.
* (Federal and State) Make sure Trump can't intefere in our elections.
* (Federal and State) Publicly investigate the figures in the Epstein filesFind your rep: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Senators:
Schiff: 202-224-3841
Padilla: 202-224-3553 (Fresno 559-497-5109 and Sacramento 916-448-2787)Governor Newsom: 916-445-2841
#politics #democrats #democracy #California #santaclara #USPol #CAPol
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The Marriage That Left No Paper Trail: On Proving Customary Law Marriage in Nigeria by Lawson Akhigbe
Nigerian law has always been more comfortable with paper than with people. A statutory marriage produces a certificate, a registrar, a stamp, a bureaucratic afterlife. A customary marriage produces witnesses, memory, and decades later, when the deceased’s estate is being carved up by relatives who suddenly remember every obligation of kinship a courtroom full of people arguing about who exactly was standing where when the kola nut was broken. -
The shenanigans surrounding the upcoming midterm election have reached a critical point. The MOST fundamental democratic right is being trampled in the full light of day. USPS cleared to withhold mail in ballots from qualified voters. TX purging 1 million voters from its rolls to tip the scales. FL. MS. SD. UT. All advancing their own versions of the “Save America” Act. #uspol #democracy #elections
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Australia - Data Centres
Maybe the machines are keeping humans believing they are in control, while implementing their own decisions.
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Smokescreen pair spotted:
Distraction: "Trump Administration Sweeping Vaccine Order Driven by RFK Jr. Concerns" (hype: 57.5/100)
Buried: "Trump Issues Birthright Citizenship Executive Order" (damage: 68.9/100)One dominated your feed. The other actually mattered.
https://distractionindex.org/smokescreen
#DistractionIndex #Democracy #ConstitutionalRights #CivicTech
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"UK Government officials warned China that actions by a foreign state to intimidate or harm individuals on British soil would not be tolerated, The i Paper has been told." https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/china-embassy-guards-threaten-uk-protesters-electroshock-weapons-4733932
bullshit. every UK gov't have tolerated this behavior from CCP or reacted mildly - Manchester consulate incident, or intimidation campaign against Hong Kongers with bounty hunting, haven't appeared out of nowhere.
#UnitedKingdom #UK #China #Democracy #HumanRights #London #CCP #HongKong
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#Meta agrees to 17 billion settlement over killing teens and girls, so that Zuck and execs don't have to testify. To think I left #Facebook in 2017 over Cambridge Analytica, and to think so many stayed on after they knew of this child murder rampage. No wonder the nation, including Biden Admin, were fine with #Epstein. And you wonder why you are losing your #Democracy when you will not even delete your #whatsapp over murder? #socialmedia
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Friedrich Merz muss zurücktreten. Warum er nicht die Landtagswahlen in Sachsen-Anhalt und Mecklenburg-Vorpommern abwarten sollte. Westliche Arroganz, wie es die taz in einem aktuellen Kommentar schreibt, hat noch nie geholfen. Aber das kann Friedrich Merz gut. Das Friedrich Merz weder Deutschland, noch der CDU und noch der Demokratie gut tut, sollte sich bis in den letzten Winkel der Republik herumgesprochen haben.
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Teil 2 - Worst-Case-Szenario: Wie kann man die Demokratie verteidigen? In diesem Teil geht es um Vereine, vor allem jene, die schon in der letzten Legislaturperiode durch die CDU Anfrage defamiert wurden.
#democracy #demokratie #lgbtq #grundgesetz #vereine #aktivisten
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It goes without saying that the democratic system in the United States (and many other western nations for that matter) needs a complete overhaul. Too much corruption in these systems and change is needed now more than ever
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RE: https://flipboard.com/@cbcnews/ottawa-dpigmqdrz/-/a-cvmwAN9DRjGnyUdMYClV-A%3Aa%3A107108217-%2F0
Another indication that #democracy is in trouble in #DougFord's #Ontario.
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Government may be easier to understand if we start with perception rather than power.
Notice weak signals → interpret patterns → shape responses → govern → observe the consequences.
Federalism then looks like nested observation across scales.
https://zenodo.org/records/22119627
#Politics #Democracy #WritingCommunity #Governance #SystemsThinking
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Week of 2026-08-23 by the numbers:
26 political events tracked
Avg. constitutional damage: 13/100
Avg. distraction score: 25/100
2 high-damage events
7 high-distraction eventsData doesn't lie. https://distractionindex.org/week/2026-08-23
#DistractionIndex #Democracy #ConstitutionalRights #CivicTech