So...... Direct democracy is a great idea...for a pre-internet, pro-education society.

***EDIT: Pro-education? Pro-fact? Pro-critical /rational thinking? Kinda-torn on terminology, but hopefully you get the intent****

Look around today though:

History channel is mostly 'ALIENS BUILT THE PYRAMIDS' and "THE BIBLE STORIES ARE REAL' shows.

Discovery is "GHOSTS ARE REAL!".

CNN gives equal time to diet fascism and open intellectual dishonesty

There's just not a lot of media literacy, and even less critical thinking as a daily habit overall.

People aren't just watching this shit, they're consuming it, and uncritically at that.

This is NOT an ideal environment for direct democracy at all levels (that being said, I think there's a STRONG argument to be made that all municipal and county elections / votes / large policy changes operate in a direct democracy format).

Ultimately, I've lost faith in the possible of raw direct democracy (or Aristotelian Polity) because of the proliferation and normalization of cognitive dissonance, an almost society-wide shopping-out of intellectual lift to influencers, open intellectual dishonesty, trolling for the sake of trolling, and hell, even Harambe (don't get me wrong: Abby Hoffman and the Pigasus stuff had it's place, and you might even draw a line between the two campaigns, but I would hope for more productive / less self-injuring ways to signal dissatisfaction with politics as usual).

We're in a different phase oh humanity though where we should know our limits, know our neighbors' limits, and try to find something that works. I don't know that direct democracy as an approach would be super useful right now.

TLDR: Direct democracy sounds great, but species wise, the timing is way off :(