Political action requires shared common sense that conspiracism destroys

Evidence

We invoke Arendt to underscore conspiracism’s destructiveness. And to underscore that, new century though it is, common sense is still the ground of democratic politics. Common sense is the political sense par excellence, Arendt advised, because the capacity for political action and common sense entail each other. When that connection is broken, politics comes to an end. Without recourse to the sometimes unspoken shared understanding of social and political reality embodied in common sense, the scope for collective political action closes down. It is closed down by disorientation. It is closed down by the fact that a new schism has opened up and taken over. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 292

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Habermas’s public sphere and shared lifeworld reasoning in communication theory. — connects to: Conspiracism attacks shared modes of explanation, not just specific targets — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 24; Conspiracist assent is a debased form of political participation rather than paralysis — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 133; Conspiracist rejection of shared facts destroys policy accountability — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 273 (+6 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies Arendt’s specific sense of common sense as the political sense that grounds collective action.

Broader Connections

• New conspiracism dissolves shared perceptions of political reality #expands (0.90) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 373
• Common sense is a key route to hegemonic power in democracies #corroborates (0.75)