Untreated democratic rot produces citizenry convinced the system is rigged.

Evidence

The politics that emerges from such conditions is what Woodly calls “the politics of despair,” which characterizes a citizenry that ceases to believe in its own political agency. A perception emerges that the system is “rigged,” that, as she puts it, the people in charge are essentially different from the actual people, and are unreachable and unresponsive. Voting comes to seem like a pointless charade. Catastrophism and a grimly pessimistic “realism” prevail. Cynics strut like sages. Meanwhile, structural inequality increases, and the people are ever more profoundly underserved by a political system that progressively feels like an irrelevant and alien imposition. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 225

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise definition of the ‘politics of despair’ state the movement is meant to counter.