If the premise is that the mindset of citizens is so easily controllable that a foreign entity can do it, then why is a foreign entity's control of citizens' mindset any worse than domestic entity's control of the same? If people have no protection against the control of their mindset, then does it not follow that their minds will be controlled by _some_ entity? Isn't the game already lost at that point? And are we really discussing whom we would rather surrender our minds to?
But in a presumably democratic society, I would have thought, people would need convincing to submit to this claim.
To provide tools that counter pressures toward tyranny.
> If people aren't trusted to express their will, however ill-informed, fickle and capricious, then what was the point of giving them the vote in the first place?
The phrasing here suggests some principle that outweighs societal good.
Informing voters in good faith helps them wield their voting tools skillfully. Informing voters in other ways yields other outcomes.
Yes.
What is the instrument for measuring societal good? And what is the mechanism for acting upon those measurements? My naive understanding is that in a society that purports to be democratic, societal good is expressed through votes (people vote for things they deem to be good, or for people who promise to bring those things about), and the enactment of those measurements is done through the same mechanism.
> Informing voters in good faith helps them wield their voting tools skillfully. Informing voters in other ways yields other outcomes.
Yes. Now we need a mechanism that establishes the goodness of faith of the informer. And if the past five or so years have taught me anything it is that barely anyone who plays professional-league politics speaks in good faith.