"A Democratic Election Is the Antithesis of an Internet Transaction"

"The awkward truth for those of us who rally in defence of liberal democracy today is that it has undergone no obvious renewal since its peak at the end of the last century. We, no less than the nationalists, are imprisoned by nostalgia, wishing the future could be more like the past. And so we find ourselves constantly testing the limits of analogue protection against a virus that is digitally borne."

Rafael Behr at The Guardian argues that "a very online culture, marked by short attention spans, narcissism and impatient consumer appetites, has a more natural affinity with shallow demagoguery than with representative democracy."