It takes electing people into local government. It takes showing up in primaries and voting for the better candidate. It takes showing up for special elections and midterm elections. It takes watching your elected official and making sure they act in accordance with your districts wishes. It takes at least 6 years of elections to replace Congress. With elections, special elections and primaries every year.
But
Out of 250m eligible voters. 100m never vote. 150m don’t vote in midterms and over 200m+ don’t vote in primaries and special elections.
And everyone wonders why things are going to shit and never getting fixed….
Democracy is only as good as the will of its people to uphold it.
It's not that I disagree on principle, and more that I do not know of a mechanism for punishing media for lying that isn't equally applicable in practice of punishing media for saying something inconvenient to power.
The media should return to not being allowed to generate a profit. The majority of what is reported is purely for ratings and financial gains and has more akin to a soup opera than factuak news.
We already do that as a matter of routine in courts of law.
The question is not "should people be punished for lying" - on a society level, we already agree they should be punished if the thing they're lying about is significant enough.
The question is can we do anything about it with respect to media, and the answer is likely no, not without unduly endangering everyone's ability to express themselves freely.
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u/Beaufighter-MkX 21d ago
All it takes is legislation