alt Hacker NewsI share your hope. I, too, am aghast at the "dumbing down," and "lowest common denominator" approach of populist politics.
I would like to mention that when I was young, I figured that if young people ruled the world, then things would be much better. I was pretty sour on the bitter, cynical old farts that didn't have a stake in things, and had basically ruined our world.
Sound familiar?
After seeing what's happened in Silicon Valley, which is pretty much my "utopian dream," I have come to realize that young people can be much, much worse than "old farts."
Maximilien Robespierre was an intellectual.
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"Populist" is whatever the other side wants. "Nuanced and complex" is my side. My point is, "muh boomers" is a pretty populist reddit-brained take.
Silicon Valley is worse than average because they're mostly techies and techies are people that on average love things more than people and have low empathy. They also lean isolationist/libertarian and are the perfect victims for "bootstraps" mentality.
The US was founded originally with a much narrower electorate in mind. John Adams essentially argued that people who didn't own property were too dependent on other people to be trusted with important decisions that affected the future of the country.
I think this populist race to the bottom you are describing is a symptom of voting simply being a button to press to enrich your own specific financial interests. This happens on both the left and right of the aisle.
I don't really know how to reconcile this in the current system. Elected representatives seem to be more concerned with career-making and personal enrichment than actually advocating for the people they are supposed to represent.
I'm not advocating for stripping rights, but I am a little bothered that perhaps Adams had a point. As an outsider to Serbian politics, it seems like an academic movement is perhaps an attempt at a nuanced solution to this problem.