Jon Ossoff

There are two crises afflicting late-stage democracy - one, empirical, and the other, "umpirical" - a term I have taken the liberty of inventing for this purpose.

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Together, their effect could be diabolical.

US President Donald Trump. Picture AAP

Crucial to legitimate government in systems like ours is the acceptance that facts are the foundation of any serious public decision-making.

Yet there is a strong sense that this presumption is itself succumbing to the burden of growing tribalism, culture wars and easily orchestrated mass-argumentation.

The dramatic flipping of majority public support for the Voice referendum in 2023 is but one example. The findings of opinion polls currently pumping One Nation's tyres, might be another.

Also foundational is "umpirical" confidence. A belief that whatever the differences over policy, the arena and terms of competition are not themselves up for grabs.

This is the precept that ultimately, the people, via established norms and structures, are the umpire. Unique to institutional democracy, the umpirical function allows a public verdict on governing performance to be expressed by voters directly via regular elections, and/or to be moderated through parliament and the courts in the meantime.

In the digital age, neither of these pillars is standing as straight as they used to. Now, most anyone can participate quickly and unfiltered in the public debate. Governments, alternative parties of government, and mainstream media are losing the upper hand.

Initially, the communications miracle of social media was imagined as hyper-democratic. In practice, it has exacerbated conflict and elevated political argument from being a means to being an end.

There is a sense that elections no longer settle questions in a polity continually at war.

Empirical evidence, or facts, jostle with opinion and compete for eyeballs against what the writer Ed Coper calls "angertainment". And all of this is slave to opaque algorithms serving unseen ideological and corporate agendas.

This rapid deterioration in the quality of productive discussion invites an unpalatable conclusion - that the post-war era of relatively stable representative democracy in countries like Australia, the US and UK, turned on the non-participatory slumber of the majority to a greater degree than we liked to admit.

In the new era of direct engagement, hard truth has softened into something more deployable and subjective - a matter of faith and group identification. Far from contesting this public decline, media companies have sometimes chased it, seeking the business opportunities it offers.

Consider the US, where these negative trends are further advanced.

Whether or not you agree with the statement "the President of the United States uses Truth Social to lie about the 'stolen' 2020 election", depends not on evidence - whether he does or not - but on affiliation.

As Trump prepared for a landmark national address on Thursday night, Democrats tried to get out ahead of him. With his approval ratings languishing in the mid-30 per cent range, the President was expected to launch another truth-defying rant because, the coming mid-term elections - just 16 weeks away - are shaping as catastrophic for him.

Democrats such as Georgia senator Jon Ossoff have used confirmation hearings to push Trump nominees to answer a simple question: "Who won the 2020 election?"

"We can't keep doing this," complained Trump's pick for director of National Security, Jay Clayton, after refusing to say.

"Well, we're going to keep doing it because you're not being honest and forthright," responded Ossoff.

And on it went. The infuriating exchange - versions of which have been attempted in countless confirmation and congressional inquiries - illustrates that the very existence of truth has been made political.

In plain sight, Republicans have surrendered the moral ground in exchange for power, and career advancement.

Tellingly, when Trump later rose in the White House's East Room, some networks had elected not to carry the address live-to-air because it would contain lies which they would be unable to contest in real-time. Trump says their broadcast licenses should now be revoked.

Ossoff and other senior Democrats have no doubt what Trump is planning with claims that an election conducted more than six years ago was "rigged" by China and covered up by a corrupt "deep state".

Even that might only be a pre-cursor to a decree that America's voting system has been infiltrated, rendering a presidential election in 2028 unsafe.

Could the world's most successful populist be tilling the soil for an historic shift of the people's umpiring power to his own hands?

How would Australia's "share values" justification for the US alliance, AUKUS, and US bases look in such circumstances?

Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute.

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