Agreed. Read any periodical from the 1600s onwards and you’ll see a lot of pen names. And to people who think discourse was more civil back then (sort of assuming that people were more responsible when being anonyminity)— they’re wrong. some of the most vile filth, slander and gossip was published.
There was a particular instance where Thomas Jefferson called John Adams a hermaphrodite (via a supporter with a newspaper) [0]. Adams apparently responded by spreading a rumor that Jefferson was dead. I believe that technique was learned from Benjamin Franklin, who "predicted" the death of a rival almanac publisher. [1]
There's much more in the way of antics among the founders of the US, but this isn't unique to them. Classical antiquity even has stories of some of the childish stuff that politicians got up to.
EDIT to add example: IIRC Cicero accused Clodius of incest and a number of other things [2]. Clodius responded by accusing Cicero of acting as a tyrannical king while he was consul. Some of the insults don't hit the same today, but this is supposed to be seriously petty stuff.
The Cicero example wasn't anonymous, of course, but then again anonymity in classical antiquity would have been a good way to make sure your story didn't survive to the modern day. Having said that, there are stories about some of the stuff that was written in graffiti in Rome.
I'm not sure if I'd call any of this stuff "worse" or not, though there was more political violence in the ancient world. I guess it depends on what you include under the term "discourse".
For what it's worth, the origins of our word "invective" apparently come from Latin [3][4]. Apropos if true.
Pen names are known to the publisher, though. They are pseudonyme s not complete anonymity.
The current full anonymity of targeted taylored communication allows for unprecedented levels of deceit, systematic and controlled disinformation of the electorate, in unprecedented ways, leading to e.g. Brexit.
This current systematic abuse of anonymity to deceive the people is not comparable to the pseudonyme books and articles and leaflets of the pre-facebook era.
If people can't tell truth from lies, why even bother having elections?
You mention Brexit. If it was a foregone conclusion that people weren't sharp enough to vote either way, why not just ask Queen Elizabeth whether they should stay or leave?
> why not just ask Queen Elizabeth whether they should stay or leave?
There is an alternative, of course. The country could be mapped out as a few hundred distinct contiguous regions, and the people who live in each region could vote for one of their fellow inhabitants to represent them.
So, rather than each individual having to weigh the complex arguments for and against Brexit, they could make a much more "human" decision of deciding whether a candidate seems honest and competent. To aid them in that decision, they can look at the candidate's past record, and the potential endorsement they may have from a political party (which itself will have a record of good or bad policies).
Then the winning candidates (hopefully under some sensible voting system) can all get together and debate the issue, and commission reports from experts, then vote on the big question themselves. Of course there's still no guarantee that the right decision would be made, but, for the record, in the 2019 general election, 52% of the popular vote went to parties that were in favour of a second referendum (which could have had a better set of options on it).
The fallacy here is that districted voting ends up with two parties. Extreme ones with fptp, mode centrist ones with, say, approval voting.
So first you want some proportional representation.
The second fallacy is that of the informed voter or the informed representative. The core issue we debated in this thread was about that second fallacy. The issue is that "information" is heavily manipulated in a world where anyone can anonymously claim anything. And how do you address that with representative democracy?
> So first you want some proportional representation.
Well, I did say "some sensible voting system", and I think such a system can still be district-based, either using some top-up seats (like in MMP) or (more controversially) assigning different weights to the votes of each representative based on what share their party got of the popular vote.[0]
> The second fallacy is that of ... the informed representative.
If someone has the full time job and the skills (as judged by the public) and the resources to seek out a broad range of opinions (from constituents, other representatives, academics, activists, and civil servants), then they are surely more able than the average citizen (or average dictator) to make a well-informed decision.
We're not expecting perfection, here, just an insulating layer between the manipulated information of the media (including social media) and the decision-making process.
Are they, now? If a politician needs $X,XXX,XXX in bribes to even get out of bed, does that make him better or worse at making decisions than the average man on the street?
I guess the question is, how many voters can you persuade with $X,XXX,XXX in political advertising? But, I suppose, if the politician is being bribed with the offer of having $X,XXX,XXX spent on advertising for their campaign, perhaps there's not much difference.
If disinformation is able to sway public opinion, and people are unable to distinguish it from the truth, which you clearly believe, then how do you know that your opinions are not also based on disinformation?
