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Malex's avatar

My big issue with a lot of the rhetoric about saving democracy is actually similar to some of the rhetoric about climate change. I think in both cases there is a clear danger and risk to inaction, but the rhetoric is so often catastrophic and sometimes doomist that reading about it is both extremely stressful for someone like me, and demoralizing/disempowering. The rhetoric so often feels like it's aimed towards a small group of elite corporate/government actors to accomplish some goal, and the everyday reader can only either act in their small way in advocacy/voting, or merely suffer in anxiety and fear over it.

That feeling is made worse by the disconnect I see between what politicians and elites say about saving democracy versus what they do. I think Yglesias pointed out that for how urgently many groups and politicians talk about saving democracy, the policy they pursue and the actions they take don't seem to match the level of urgency in their rhetoric. And at that point I start to wonder: is there a discrepancy between how urgent and dangerous they say the problem is versus how urgent they believe it is? Are they exaggerating the threat to maintain my attention because it's useful for them if I'm scared?

I really don't want to think like that. I want to feel like I have an accurate sense of the threat of democracy, like with climate change, without feeling helpless or like I'm being taken advantage of. January 6th unfortunately brought me back into a day of doomscrolling and losing sleep, because the coverage in the news and online was so frightening for me. And then the next day the coverage went back to normal -- that frustrates me and leaves me inclined to skepticism. I wonder how many other people might feel the way I feel about this.

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Ben W's avatar

Polis has done a great job, and I wish there were more Dems like him. But I'll also take DeSantis's approach over the more heavy-handed Dem governors. If DeSantis stopped with the weird banning of mask mandates, I'd like it much more. Let local communities decide what's best for themselves.

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