In the classical "Amusing Ourselves to Death" Neil Postman makes a case that politics, and the quality of political debate, has deteriorated a lot from 18-19th century standards.
Back in 1850s, Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln debated with three hours speeches each. It wouldn't sit well with the attention span of modern audience.
.. whereas the outcome of the process seems to have (unevenly) improved in the 20th century.
Lincoln had to persuade people that slavery was a bad idea. We have now, largely, climbed that particular hill and are working on the next society-wide injustices.
Also, that three hour debate would be all you got. We have 24 hour rolling news now.
(I have to admit that Trump is contradicting this thesis rather badly)
I'm not so sure about that. Nowadays politicians have to convince people that banning gay marriage is a bad idea and scientists have to convince politicians that blasting all those greenhouse gases into the atmosphere might not be a good idea.
It's always easy to look back and say "Why did this issue even need an argument?!".
Because a lot of people have a lot of mental furniture that they have to move to get there, and that makes this hard for them.
"Marriage is between a man and a woman" was a standard for a very long time. It wasn't arbitrary. It had a really solid and complicated derivation. The Stonewall Riots were 47 years ago, but in the early '90s, even Obama and Ms. Clinton agreed with "man and woman", at least in public.
And there are still people who will hold that this is a "sin" and you can't really tell them otherwise because they use a different moral toolkit than you do.
AGW research dates to roughly 1989 - call that 27 years ago. That's not that long. It's also balanced on a very tricky spot in our economic system. It is inherently political. There's also no clear path to mitigate it beyond granting government(s) a lot of power.
Equal marriage is very much an example of the process working, from homosexuality being illegal within many people's lifetimes. Social change always takes a long time as it involves gradually changing norms, not just legal process. Persuading people that the alleged "harm" is entirely mythological.
GHG on the other hand is a problem where lots of people's incomes depend on ignoring it.
As an equal marriage (and general civil rights) proponent, I think it's less that "the process works" and more that we have gotten very lucky that the Supreme Court has accumulated far more power than it was ever intended to have and has largely used that power to override the democratic will of the majority in cases where it has been oppressive to various minority groups. If we had to wait for the "right" laws to pass through legislatures, I don't believe we would have nearly the level of civil rights that we do today.
I think the courts and bureaucracy being unresponsive to popular opinion, social norms (social stare decisis if you will), and the regular rules of American democracy (i.e., actually amending the Constitution when appropriate) has resulted in the rising popularity of figures like Donald Trump.
It's hard to argue that the system isn't rigged when the rules of the system aren't as important as the outcome that relatively powerful decision-makers want to see.
I agree with you that populist movements are a natural result of systems like ours that are not fully democratic. Whether or not you think the system is "rigged" depends on what you think the system is. If "the system" is the form of government we've had since at least the end of the civil war (but really, since close to the beginning), with a strong non-representative bureaucracy, a powerful judiciary, and powerful private political parties, then it isn't "rigged", it just has components that don't answer directly to the people at large. But if you think "the system" is a pure democracy, then yes, it has been "rigged" from the start. Personally, I'm a much bigger fan of our system with all its checks and balances between competing interests than I would be of the more democratic system that a lot of people seem to think we have.
I'd say most people's lives ( or at least quality of life ) somehow depend on ignoring it for now. Is the Sub Belt going to empty out? Weill we go fully towards public transport? Will suburbs disappear? These are quite disruptive.
I have to disagree. I think each society is a product of its environment, both natural and social. It's extremely hard to be pacifistic when your neighbors are rattling guns.
We now impose many injustices, like imprisoning any person who refuses to hand over a third of the currency they receive in private trade, that we did not in the 19th century, and have adopted an ideology (social democracy) that glorifies these injustices and ridicules those who call attention to them.
Maybe it is better, politics is now more open and problems can be recognized faster. In 1850s British government did not notice, that millions were dying in Great Famine.
Correct. Much of modern society is the way it is because it was deliberately manufactured to be that way, from throwaway consumerism to sound bite politics.
I think over time public speakers have seen a benefit in reducing ideas to memorable slogans. This way their words are understandable to everyone and not just those who can understand the complexity of the issue. Whether this is good or bad for society is certainly up for debate.
Back in 1850s, Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln debated with three hours speeches each. It wouldn't sit well with the attention span of modern audience.