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Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how much nihilism there is in the comments with regards to democracy.

I put it down to the fact that modern media-driven, first-past-the-post, limited-party democracies don't trumpet compromise.

Compromise happens often, but nobody wants to talk about it, because it's not primary-sexy.

So people are left with a news/PR feed that only shows the political extremes.

E.g. In the US, how many of the near-unanimous votes did you hear about?

* Senate: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_...

* House: https://clerk.house.gov/Votes

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> Compromise happens often, but nobody wants to talk about it, because it's not primary-sexy.

This. If you've ever actually been on the Hill, you'll find that most GOP and DNC politicians and staffers are very cordial with each other and work together very often.

Even the legislation passage rate hasn't change since the 1970s.

Social media has been weaponized. I can't wait for Section 230 to be repealed.

Worked on a congressional campaign and got to peek in on the legislating side. Was surprised by the congeniality as a young ideologue who expected things to be more adversarial.

The real eye opener was how much overlap there was with donors giving to both sides in a campaign. Guess you need to hedge your bets.

At the end of the day, they all have the same job, which means they likely have more in common with each other than the average partisan punter.

In the same way that athletes of sports teams don't actually hate each other.

> If you've ever actually been on the Hill, you'll find that most GOP and DNC politicians and staffers are very cordial with each other

Is this really a positive?

Yes. In previous times that was known as cooperation, debate, and compromise.

Unfortunately, it's been rebranded as collusion and the deep state to a certain segment of the population.

With a shifting overtones window, the end result isn't really compromise.

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