Preface: as per usual, I am continuing on with my combative/antagonistic/evasive/abstract/mumbo-jumbo-seeming speaking style - apolgies in advance, but I truly believe that someone should be trying something different, consider the state of affairs that we find ourselves in (~all the problems in the world).

Also: excuse spelling/grammar errors, I will try to do a cleanup pass a bit later.

> What, specifically do you find illegitimate about American democracy?

That it (at least implicitly) claims to be "Of the people, by the people, and for the people", that the projected and perceived as accurate narrative is that it exercises "the will of the people". When in fact, the will of the people is not known, because very little attempt has been made to determine what the will of the people is (and other things: "the people" are, generally speaking, "not too bright", and the causality behind this unfortunate circumstances is not known or well investigated, but if you were to dig into it, what you will typically find at the end of the strong is: the government).

I could go on and on and on, and based on extensive experience discussing such topics with a very wide range of people, I confidently predict that if we were to get into the fine-grained details, before long you would balk, you would accuse me of "overthinking", being "pedantic", start making various "ya well" style excuses, and so on and so forth.

Or another way of putting it might be something like:

select distinct behavior_type from human_activity where topic like '%government%' and reality_level='perception'

I propose to you here today that human beings have a way about them, and that by virtue of you being a human being (and being raised and shaped by the cultures you exist within), you (to some degree) exhibit these behavior, I suspect with not 100% conscious awareness that this is the way it is.

At this point, a typical cards that are typically played (by my counterpoint in the conversation, or dang if he was to encounter this thread) is something along the lines of "we can't know anything, nihilism", "you're talking metaphysical jibber jabber" "your words have no meaning", "HN is not the place for this sort of X", etc. This sort of thing, I propose to you, is your nature.

You want detail? I am at your disposal, and I suspect my willingness to discuss what is true (or may be, or not) can easily outlast your ability to remain curious about what is true.

> Getting some specific thoughts about this would be nice. Much better than what you did say, which I interpreted (perhaps incorrectly -- but the lack of detail is pretty telling) as a metaphorical rolled-up newspaper along with "American democracy bad! Bad American democracy!"

"the lack of detail is pretty telling" is an interesting (but not uncommon) phrase. When you say this, what are you referring to? I will take a guess: might it be ~reality?

> I have specific issues with the American political system myself, including but not limited to, the pervasive impact of money in our political system, especially as to how it strongly reinforces the current two-party hegemony.

To my style of thinking, this is one item (with an unknown epistemic status, and an unknown comprehensive-causality-weighted importance), in a set of utterly unknown (but perhaps imagined as known) size.

> However, I don't see it as illegitimate as you appear to do. So I'll ask again. What specifically makes American democracy "illegitimate?"

I propose that a highly optimal way to think about such things is as a tautological statement + question: "What makes American democracy illegitimate, is that which makes American democracy illegitimate. So then: what is it that makes American democracy illegitimate, accurately and comprehensively?"

Do you possess the answer to this question? Does it seem like you possess the answer to this question? Do you care what the answer to this questions is? And when considering such questions, be mindful if your mind is conceptualizing them as binaries (True/False) or a spectrum (the degree to which each "is" (or may be) True/False).

Do you like this sort of thinking? In my experience, most people not only do not like it, but they reject it outright, often with strong emotions and supreme confidence. I believe that this is our nature, at least for now. (Here it may be useful to consider the history of the aggregate conceptualization of (aka: ~reality) African Americans by the population of the USA, and elsewhere.) Sometimes humanity can modify the fabric of reality, but usually they seem unable (and unwilling).

(continued...)