People are often obnoxious, irrational, absurd, and they may even flat out lie. Shocking! Advocating for this mess to be kept from view is advocating for further obscuring the reality of the situation.
I grew up in a time when the TV only presented a polished, curated, “civilized” view of the world. It’s why most Americans didn’t know anything about US interventions in Latin America, about the effects of offshoring and trade liberalization, and about the false justifications for the Iraq War. (Yet even in the late 20th century, conspiracy talk was rampant—it’s not a new phenomenon nor was it created by the internet.)
Before we had the internet, many things were done with my tax dollars that I had zero insight into. These days, even though I can’t do anything about it, at least I’m aware of the parade of horrors around the world. In some cases I can even make informed decisions based on that information.
I’d rather have fellow voters making decisions based on an abundance of information, some of which is bad, than a carefully crafted set of information that’s designed to steer voters toward a limited set of outcomes.
This is how you get atrocities and coverups, strategic losses that don’t result in corrective action, and endless graft. Eventually this leads to major military losses. Some degree of wartime censorship is inevitable to conceal information from the enemy, but anything beyond that creates serious problems in a democracy.
Ideally you should trust your government. In a healthy democracy the government can create a barrier to entry for the media and then be hands off only intervening when necessary. This isnt a bad thing at all in my opinion.
I prefer this to having 0 barrier to enter the media and allowing anyone to give their opinion.
There is no such thing as a nation consistently working towards common goals, except in a totalitarian system. At best you can get a few years of alignment in wartime, but even then you often need to brutally repress dissent to maintain that alignment. In peacetime, different people have divergent goals, and unless you are on a civilizational upswing (like the US in the mid-20th century or contemporary China) then discontented voters will multiply, and they need to have a real say in the direction of the country. Thinking you can gaslight people into consistently voting against their interests without consequences is hubris.
This whole “managed democracy” business that Europe is moving towards will end in fire.