Anne Applebaum:
Unintentionally, it sounds like a scene from the Monty Python movie...
Because of course all British people sound like Monty Python, no duh.
They are similar in their lack of focus, in their inchoate nature, and above all in their refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions. In New York, marchers chanted, “This is what democracy looks like,” but actually, this isn’t what democracy looks like....Democracy looks a lot more boring. Democracy requires institutions, elections, political parties, rules, laws, a judiciary and many unglamorous, time-consuming activities, none of which are nearly as much fun as camping out in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral or chanting slogans on the Rue Saint-Martin in Paris.
No, Anne, that's government. Government is not the same thing as democracy.
Well, they already have a process: It’s called the British political system. And if they don’t figure out how to use it, they’ll simply weaken it further.
Participatory democracy cannot survive the participation of the people!
That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.
Whoops, that's not an Applebaum quote, that's from the Declaration of Independence. Remember that, Anne? Those DFHs back in the 18th Century (not the 16th!) who, you know, made this country happen? They tried working through the system, and the system didn't work. So they made a new one. Sometimes you have to do that.