CMV: My daughter will never get to make *meaningful* democratic decisions

My daughter and her generation will get to vote in ~15 years. I'm from Germany but follow a lot of US and European politics and see these bleak trends in both places. The scary part is that these developments only seem to speed up the concentration of power away from the people.

• Media: With the way media handles politics and the attention economy the meat of politics is not interesting anymore compared to the next set of crazy claims that make the news.

Unbiased news becomes a rare resource and strategy's to 'get you' with outrageous bits advance further and further. Be it personalized content or echo chambers or even targeted manipulations as the Russia meddling in the us election.

Thre will only be more tools and tricks to get under our skin with advancing technology.

• Centrists: The big party's fight each other tooth and nail at least on the outside but much of that seems to be just show. They are not that different and not really willing to any big change. They sit in a comfortable center and fight over minor details. In its worst case they let us fight over the 'lesser evil' as with Trump or Hillary, both of which were despised by countless people even on their side.

This trend of growing closer together while appearing to be vastly different is made into an art these days.

• Lobbying: While politicians are supposed to listen to the people they listen to money a lot. Money in politics is steadily increasing and I don't see it stopping since it's working well to advance goals in non-democratic ways.

• Controlling the Internet/Information: Whistleblowers? Prism? Filters? Power of ISP's? Netneutrality? The worst hasn't happened yet but not for lack of trying.

• Power consolidation: This seems to be the most nefarious aspect, where on a subtle level the way in which we conduct politics is shifted towards a place where we feel our vote mattering while the people in power stay in power regardles. Gerrymandering in the US is one of the most blatant ways to do this. Discrediting the Media is another. Overly complex, boring or nontransparent practices make participation frustrating or impossible.

I would like to believe, she gets a chance to shape the future together with her peers but I'm afraid the game will be rigged way to hard.

Submitted July 08, 2019 at 02:02PM by MolochDe https://ift.tt/2LFK6dC