I'm excerpting this one paragraph as an aside, because it goes to something I'm just beginning to grasp, namely, that the first word in "participatory democracy" is redundant; there is no democracy without active engagement by the majority of citizens. The infrastructure of democracy may linger on but will decay away if the citizens are passive. Apparently lots of wise people have not understood this yet.
You should be able to see immediately why John’s populism was anathema to the SCLM {So-Called Liberal Media}. They view voters as members of a passive audience, whereas populism assumes the grassroots are made up of citizens to whom public institutions, like government and the media, are ultimately answerable, and that when they are not, public activism is a vital answer.
