@EmptySet @Remittancegirl @cstross @trurl @logomancer People in the US would indeed do well to step down from their exceptionalist soapboxes and start studying other countries for a change. There's like a dozen and a half countries in Europe alone that had to build their democratic frameworks from the ground up more or less overnight, and more or less succeeded at it (with some caveats). And it only happened some 30 years ago.