Latest / Language Matters by Elias Winter
The People Are Not in the Room
The United States still speaks in the language of popular sovereignty.
Government of the people.
By the people.
For the people.
The phrase hangs in classrooms like a relic from a religion no one practices but everyone invokes. It is not a lie exactly. It is a liturgy. And liturgies survive long after belief has thinned.
The problem is not that elections are fake. The problem is that sovereignty has migrated.
In large societies, power does not disappear. It concentrates. It gathers where organization gathers. It sits where continuity sits. It settles wherever the incentives are strong enough…
The skinny
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