17 April

All modern democracies share this same fantasy. “The American political system has evolved several mechanisms to protect its own dysfunction. One of them is fantasy. Like a spouse who manages to remain monogamous by continually imagining the affairs she is going to have but never does, the political process protects itself by imagining an alternative in which a third party or independent presidential candidate will emerge any day now, sweep away partisanship, polarization, corruption, and stasis, and enact lots of sensible policies.” Democracy, A Journal of Ideas