
What happened: Hillary’s view (by Larry Lessig) - smacktoward
https://medium.com/@lessig/what-happened-hillarys-view-7535b0f18932
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irq-1
> Overwhelmingly, they believed their “representative democracy” was corrupt
> because it did not “represent” — at least them. And yet the campaign did
> nothing fundamental to address this fundamental fact about us.

Lessig sees the corruption of representation in government and the general
election, and laments that Clinton didn't really want to fix it, not really.

The Clinton campaign fixed the DNC primaries, denying people the choice of who
would represent them. The choice of candidate was made before the primaries
started. Clinton's position on corruption was clear before the campaign
started.

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Terretta
TL;DR: 77,000 votes lost due a little bit to Comey’s October surprise, a lot
to bad reporting driven by commercialization of media, but mostly [and still]
to not recognizing Americans on both sides have lost faith in government.

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racerror
Wow. This is borderline unreadable.

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acjohnson55
I downvoted you, because your comment, as it currently stands, is not at all
insightful. However, I also wanted to reply, in case you care to explain your
actual criticism.

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AmIFirstToThink
>We are missing something essential to the DNA of a functioning democracy, and
it’s not obvious there’s any way to fix it.

Chasing Utopia, while not having answers how to get there, and for that matter
even not knowing what this utopia looks like.

This is just I don't like what happened so let me see what could have made it
not happen, that's all. Let me rearrange the world with no regard to how
messed up it would get.

As exemplified in...

>It’s not clear American democracy can survive commercial media

He could have gone little more meta and said It's not clear if humanity could
survive humanity. American experiment is longest surviving thriving experiment
of democracy, security and prosperity to date. We are not going to change
because you don't like the results. This election worked despite commercial
media, it shows that American democracy is surviving and thriving. Any
proposal to "fix" the situation must come with enormous proof of it working,
and at reasonable cost, and with no significant downside, otherwise we would
rather keep what we have, thank you very much.

>And the picture of Clinton as policy-wonk-in-chief is both compelling and
again, tragic. This is her central feature: How is it most have no clue about
this bit of her character?

The problem was Americans became too aware of it. Libya and Syria was her to
own, and what it did to Europe was colossal failure as a policy-wonk. North
Korea became what it is now on her watch. She should have lost with greater
margin on that basis alone. I see this as not enough people paying attention.

Her problem was not that not enough people knew her record, but that she had
lot of record for people to judge her for, and they found her not only
lacking, but disastrous.

>Overwhelmingly, they believed their “representative democracy” was corrupt
because it did not “represent” — at least them. And yet the campaign did
nothing fundamental to address this fundamental fact about us.

"it did not "represent"" is wrong way to look at democracy, instead of people
selecting professional representatives from Dems or Reps to represent issues
that they themselves are not convinced of, the people chose Trump to represent
them. At the end people won, campaigns lost, it was beautiful to watch. And I
thank Trump of giving the people that, and as Michael Moore professed "it felt
good".

>That blindness leaves the field wide open for the party of no — no taxes, no
immigration, no health care, no (more) social security, no protection for
privacy, no network neutrality, no family planning, no dreamers.

No arguments offered. Just take this and shove it down your throat, because
that's the world they want to live in. Do I have an opinion or not? Do I get
to hear why this is good for me or us, or not? Why are these the axioms of Dem
platform? Why should I accept them?

>If we fixed democracy first, we might create a world in which the wisdom of
the wonks could be heard again.

Democracy needs to be fixed because Clinton lost. Is that the argument here?
This just got ridiculous.

Does Lawrence, as a wonk himself, thinks that if Democracy is fixed then he
would get better audience to his wonky thoughts?

Did it occur to him that making people see things your way may be one of the
basic skills of being a wonk? A skill, which he himself has compared to others
whose thoughts get no attention from anyone. Like this comment here on
hackernews, lol. Trump had this skill in heaps, and he made it count. Glad he
did.

Long live America.

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acjohnson55
> Chasing Utopia, while not having answers how to get there, and for that
> matter even not knowing what this utopia looks like.

I'm not sure whether you have much prior knowledge of the author, but he has
advanced _plenty_ of ideas on how the situation can be improved.

> American experiment is longest surviving thriving experiment of democracy,
> security and prosperity to date. We are not going to change because you
> don't like the results. This election worked despite commercial media, it
> shows that American democracy is surviving and thriving. Any proposal to
> "fix" the situation must come with enormous proof of it working, and at
> reasonable cost, and with no significant downside, otherwise we would rather
> keep what we have, thank you very much.

This is only really true if you frame "democracy" as being whatever America
has been, at any given time. The extent to which American security and
prosperity have anything to do with democracy is debatable.

> Democracy needs to be fixed because Clinton lost. Is that the argument here?
> This just got ridiculous.

No, American democracy failed because a complete charlatan is president. The
fact that this is the case, despite the fact that Hillary Clinton won the
popular vote, is only the final failure in a long chain of democratic
dysfunction. I'd argue that an effective system wouldn't give voters the
choice between two intensely reviled candidates, to begin with. And I also
agree with Lessig that our media culture succeeded in commercializing a
chaotic and shameful campaign, while failing miserably to focus the election
of issues that actually matter.

~~~
AmIFirstToThink
>while failing miserably to focus the election of issues that actually matter

They failed? They decide what they should focus on, or should you decide for
them? Who gave you the judge position? Care to take any efforts into claiming
that judge position? Why should I or they grant you that? They, or I, should
change our ways because you don't like it? What argument you have to claim
that people didn't focus on what they should have in voting for Trump? I see
that as a supremacist statement. May be he would have won with bigger margin,
if they had really paid attention to what was going on.

>This is only really true if you frame "democracy" as being whatever America
has been, at any given time. The extent to which American security and
prosperity have anything to do with democracy is debatable.

:s/democracy/utopia

You get the idea. No description of utopia other than in the utopia Hillary
was president. Well, I reject the thought, as no argument was given. I quite
like America and would rather live here than any place else. All are free to
leave America if they don't like it. If you propose changing America, you wish
alone is not going to cut it, put up an argument.

I am quite aware of Lawrence's work, and have supported/appreciated it. Above
comments were a response to that article, not an attack on Lawrence. I am sure
he can defend himself quite well, if he happen to read it.

