It’s probably not the best time to recommend direct democracy when the white supremacist mob is on the march, but bear with me.
On the one hand, mob rule with the current, benighted, Deplorable mob would be super fucking bad. No question.
On the other hand, if decisions involving life and liberty and, far more importantly, property were up to the masses then the 1% would be less gung ho to allow those masses to sink into ignorance and the anesthesia of sports and television, or even deliberately drive them there to fluff share price. If the Bush and Clinton (and Koch and Kennedy) family fortunes were at the whim of the simple majority, I think we'd see a lot more education spending — particularly history, political science, economics, and liberal arts — in self-defense.
By definition, the mob isn't stupid, it's average, and average voters have at minimum enough on the ball not to have wandered into traffic. They aren't morons, they just ignorant as fuck, and that ignorance is some portion malign neglect and some portion a deliberate policy choice by elites because it makes the mob easier to control and far easier to sell crap to and boost sales.
The 1% is free to do that because the mob has no power to hurt them. Technology has rendered the elite safe from mob violence, while our political system castrates democratic political power on all fundamental issues. This is good because the Deplorables aren’t burning Muslims in the public square, but it’s bad because it has allowed the institutionalization of plutocratic monetary and fiscal policies, and it means white collar criminals who ruin tens of millions of lives have virtually no chance of being stopped, let alone sent to federal PMITA prison, and as soon as any political force becomes strong enough to challenge them it is co-opted by simply extending membership privileges to its leadership.
The plutes on the right, as well as we their more fun at parties intellectual sworn enemies on the left, are armchair generals in protected bunkers. Full, no holds barred, direct democracy would stick us in the trenches to live or die or thrive or be impoverished based on the collective whim of the Great Unwashed. Now, that sounds awful to me personally and I'll fight it because hey I worked hard for my spa tub and I love my daughter and want her to sleep on silk sheets.
But it also sounds American as hell.
