@ike i guess how concentrated we'll only now in a while, when we see a pace of changes! over time, we are always changing and renegotiating things, with some people painfully aware about what's awful in the _status quo_ (ie car culture), and some people suffering a painful sense of loss over what they take as ordinary, familiar, good. the smartphone provoked a pretty compressed round of changes. everything we no do via an app, we did differently not long ago. 1/

@ike (this piece provoked a bit of a sense of loss in me, as the author's innovative new restaurant is in the neighborhood i moved from and sorely miss just over a year ago.)

@LouisIngenthron Political institutions shape the electorate as much as the electorate shapes political institutions. The electorate under an approval voting system would yield very different representation than plurality voting and primaries. The US Constitution is very self-consciously founded on the insight that "democracy" alone in not enough to form a decent state, careful institutions must organize and shape how the "will of the people" is formed and expressed.

@LouisIngenthron Where impeachment is not an adequate institution, we can make new ones. Why have laws against bribery, when there is always impeachment?

@LouisIngenthron We've been trying to educate the human community to be better for all of humanity. Basing any practical politics on the near-term success of that strikes me as a bit fanciful. 1/

@LouisIngenthron Why is it a legitimate grievance that a person hired by the state has to conform the manner of his speech to democratically prescribed norms? Is it illegitimate that a schoolteacher may discuss differences between religious communities, but would be fired if she referred to one as "vermin"? 2/

@LouisIngenthron Even for ordinary citizens, the first amendment permits restrictions of the *manner* of speech. For public officials, the legitimacy of restrictions is much clearer, and still this would only be a restriction on manner. One could advocate for war. One could not refer to the citizens of the group we would be at war with as "human animals". 3/

@LouisIngenthron Why does our highest level officials having restrictions on manner of speech that we'd readily accept for every schoolteacher in the nation amount to a legitimate grievance? Or should public schoolteachers have the right to refer describe some groups as animals when they teach about history and cultural difference? Do schoolteachers have a legitimate grievance there? /fin

@LouisIngenthron at a popular level, sure I agree we need to address the demand, though I think "education" is nearly always a nonanswer, a stand-in for an answer, rather than an answer.

but the supply by public officials in power and authority I think might have an important role in catalyzing popular impulses towards self-righteous violence, and the behavior of public officials is among the most clearly legitimate objects of public regulation. 1/

@LouisIngenthron nothing is a panacea, but do you think this wouldn't have a reasonable chance of helping? /fin

@LouisIngenthron i think the reason for a rule like this is precisely because we know in the heat of some moments, rhetoric like this is popular, contributes to leaders’ political fortunes rather than harming them.

so, the wise thing for a democracy to do in cooler times is to democratically choose to prohibit it. 1/

@LouisIngenthron individually we understand that while we have a choice every moment, if we want to lose weight it’s better not to have chocolate in the house, to skip it at the store, even though of course no one forces us to open up our pantry and succumb to it. if someone claimed we should all tolerate chocolate in something like home minibars because that maximizes point-of-purchase choice, we’d understand that’s not actually pro freedom. /fin

@Alon yes. i think it’s fair to point out neither side began with dehumanization at a leadership level, viz Ukraine. at a public level, even before there were “orcs” there were disparagements against “khokhol” on Russian social media. 1/

@Alon but overall i agree with you re:Russia - Ukraine. this rule would not have prevented that conflict, which was prosecuted very coolly as a geopolitical choice by Russia’s leaders, not by virtue of cycles between an inflamed public and inflammatory leadership. 2/

@Alon but many conflicts do depend upon those kinds of inflammatory cycles to gear up to violence and atrocity. consider eg the Yugoslav wars, and of course signally Rwanda. perhaps Russia-Ukraine is the exception that proves the rule? /fin