The biggest danger to democracy is propaganda. The problem is that sometimes democracy may help with propaganda.

We live in the post-truth era, in which facts seem to cease to matter. The only thing that matters is to reinforce your beliefs, without the facts presented by experts and authorities. What is more, as worries Glassworthy, many media reports express what the public wants and are commercial. Of course, such reports can distort our perception of the world, but thanks to democratic tools, we are smarter to detect lies and fight them. The problem may be that democracy is not only about fighting but also about compromising.

I once read that England’s national fallacy is argumentum ad temperantiam, which means achieving compromise regardless of the truth or real data, just to calm down the fracas between opposing counsels. That time (after reading this statement), without thinking too much about it, it seemed to me like an ideal condition for our well-being. Now that I have a better awareness of the subject, I realize that agreeing on what is acceptable for most people may establish a common understanding of truth.

It’s sad to say, authorities often do not help, as many experts have started to use language that makes them nothing more than talking heads. This is how authorities are created nowadays. Many of them represent grand narratives. This is something that is unacceptable for postmodern philosophers, due to the fact that postmodernism is about fighting with grand narratives.

The truth is, we live in a condition that is unbearable for both modern Montesquieu and postmodern philosophers.