a public service announcement for disappointed democrats - where do we go from here?

if this wasn't going to happen now, it was going to happen the next election, or the next after that. there are severe and fundamental problems with our democracy, and until they are addressed, we have to expect a meaningless, factless oscillation between the two business parties indefinitely. to expect otherwise would be a baseless and pointless optimism which served only to disappoint and exhaust us.

right now we should be figuring out how to restore meaningful and effectual democratic dialogue as a public phenomenon, rather than a privatized profit-driven monologue managed by corporate media and directed by largely unknown business interests. currently, political engagement entails no more than casting a vote and possibly putting a bumper sticker on your car - this amounts to spectatorship in a vital area of civic life. our public dialogue should be participatory and represent our real interests as citizens - it should be a medium through which we come to understand one another and the problems we face, and generate solutions from below rather than having them marketed to us.

we need to re-invent the newspaper and the evening news - we need to throw away the privately-hosted read-only paradigm and replace it with an open-source alternative, open to all of us. reddit is a start but we have to do better.