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If you are familiar with the idea of "technical debt," then I have an analogy for you. 2020 is mostly the result of "democratic debt." I credit @laurenduca& #39;s excellent book How to Start a Revolution for giving me this way of thinking about it. 1/6
She highlights and reframes democracy as a verb rather than a noun, which is something I have always known but not really thought about. I come from long lines of community-involved people on both sides. 2/6
But as I think back, firstly I think my family are outliers in this respect, and secondly, even they have become less and less involved in politics slowly over the past decades. I think there are many reasons for this, but the upshot is that citizens aren& #39;t doing their jobs. 3/6
So my original point is that we& #39;ve been treating democracy like a black box and just assuming everyone inside that box is doing their jobs. Meanwhile cops have been murdering people, politicians and CEOs (who aren& #39;t even supposed to be in the box!) have been looting. 4/6
We are now stuck doing all-night maintenance on a Friday of a long weekend on our democracies. And as anyone who has had to do this kind of catch-up work knows, it& #39;s unpleasant and frustrating, and there will be shouting, and stuff might get broken 5/6
But hopefully after that, you are able to make meaningful changes to processes that keep the debt from piling up for a while. Or maybe the whole operation just goes bust. But anyway, 2020 is what happens when you treat your democracy like a black box, so quit it. 6/6
