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Introduction:
Laura Chasin, director of the Public Conversations Project, talks
about the degeneration of public discourse and the rise of single-issue politics. She thinks
that unless there is some way to counter this divisiveness, genuine democracy will
not be able to flourish.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Democracy?
Laura Chasin
Director of the Public Conversations Project, Watertown, Massachusetts
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A lot of the concerns that I had when I studied Political Science
before I went to social work school, about my understandings of democracy, and
the American Political process, and what it takes to make democracy really work
had been fueling a growing alarm about what's going on in this country, as far
as the growing decisiveness, the rise of single-issue politics, this sort of
degeneration of discourse in the public square.
The evidence of voter
disengagement, violent episodes of violence and so forth. I had a pre-existing
concern over whether democracy - warts and all - god knows, that I have known in
my lifetime, was going to be something my grandchildren were going to
experience. I really thought, unless we can develop wide-spread antidotes, sort
of agents of social glue, to counteract the forces that are fueled by the media
in the political process that are augmenting divisiveness, isolation of groups
from one another, demonization of those who are different and that kind of
thing. Unless we can do it, I basically think that this country is going to go
down the tubes in ways that would make me deeply sad.
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