I know some suspect me of having drunk the authoritarian Kool Aid, by suggesting we abolish elections. But I…

I know some suspect me of having drunk the authoritarian Kool Aid, by suggesting we abolish elections. But I often Tweet about how societies are now modelled after high schools, and their popularity networks. It's not an analogy. Elections are the transplanting of that.../1

...mechanism into the adult world. The horror people react with when you suggest abolishing elections shows how deeply populism has infected democracy, that it's now seen as synonymous with popular elections. That was how it did it, by substituting the many layers.../2

...of due process that make up democratic institutions with a single, homogeneous measure - popular election. They're marketing men, that's their dream, they can create and manipulate popularity at will. I see the despair people feel that nothing is done about Covid, or.../3

...climate change, international emergencies. And how they wallow in the populist framing, hoping if they could just elect a better person, things would be ok again. That's the populists winning, every day, they can make anything popular. /4

They say 'we have a mandate', or 'people won't tolerate more public health measures', all the time marketing these same outcomes, massaging the popularity to do their bidding. It took them only months to make basic public health measures, centuries-old, into unpopular.../5

...oppression. This stuff is easy for them. You can elect anybody you like to oppose them, when they don't win an election they then reframe all the needed action in negative ways, making it unpopular, as Tony Abbott did with the NBN, and climate. /6

They'll always win while we allow them to replace the entire complex edifice of democracy with a single popular vote every 3-4 years. They will use that 'mandate' to trash everything, as Scott Morrison showed. Democracy can only be saved by removing popularity as a measure. /end