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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'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't doing their jobs. 3/6
So my original point is that we'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'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'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
