With the return of Donald Trump to the global stage, something many would rather avoid has once again become impossible to ignore: the democratic system as we have designed it no longer functions. Not occasionally. Not temporarily. Structurally.
This is not an argument against democracy as an ideal. On the contrary. Democracy remains the least bad system of governance we know. But it is precisely this insight that makes the current situation so dangerous: we cling to forms that once worked, but have since turned into obstacles to effective governance in a fundamentally changed world.
We no longer live in the nineteenth century. Yet we continue to govern as if we do.