U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

Exactly the opposite!

For one, Germany too had a representative system and elites governing. So what happened there wasn't some issue with "direct democracy" and tyrannical masses that a representative democracy would stop.

Second, even within Germany's non-direct-democracy system, the masses last voted for the various parties in 1933 in iirc, the Holocaust started much later, almost 8 years later. In fact, masses wise, Hitler didn't even democratically won 1933 elections. The last time the public had a chance to say anything, was a referendum in 1938, which wasn't on that matter at all (and which result was tampered by the party anyway -- there was "widespread intimidation of voters").

Hitler's Germany is hardly a case against direct democracy and the "tyranny of the masses". If anything, if people voted directly, Hitler might not have even gotten in power -- and his actions would be much more controlled and constrain, as in a direct democracy (ancient Athenian style) people decide for all matters, and can vote someone out of office at anytime, they don't give a blank check to some "representative".

And of course, the same horrible crimes could happen in the total opposite of a direct democracy, a downright dictatorship. And indeed, they did in Stalinist USSR or Maoist China.

So, thus far, we've ruled out representative democracy (Hitler), and dictatorship (Stalin).

Maybe direct democracy looks better now?

Maintaining the status quo is an incredibly valuable position for democratically elected politicians to have. Joe Biden’s entire campaign is built on “I won’t change anything except spruce up the ACA a bit.”

Representative democracy involves various groups focusing attention on one issue or the other. When it comes to things like drinking water or food, people’s fear of “impure” food can cause public panic vastly out of proportion to the actual problem. Nobody is thinking “hmm, would I give up stain resistant carpets and clothing and non-stick pans for a negligible lower risk of getting testicular cancer?”

PFAS are, at this point, a cause for study, not a cause for dramatic action: https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/p...

The two most studied, PFOA and PFOS are no longer produced in the US. The others are not well studied:

> But the health effects of the PFAS chemicals used instead of PFOS and PFOA are less known. As these newer chemicals accumulate in the drinking water in some areas of the U.S., scientists and state officials are trying to determine how they affect humans. At least some of them can be eliminated from the body more quickly than PFOS and PFOA and may be less toxic, according to DeWitt—but they still might cause problems, she cautions.

PFAS chemicals have been in wide use since the 1950s. Clearly they are reasonably safe. The question is whether the potential health benefits of reducing their use outweigh the cost of losing their advantages.

Here, there was no “cover up.” Nobody was hiding the measurements of the levels of PFAS in water systems. The question was whether the DHHS should issue a guideline that would set the PFAS target at a level 1/10th as high as what is present in many public water systems is not something that necessarily should happen. After all, how are they deriving that guideline? When you have exposure dependent chemicals, you can’t set the limits at the lowest levels where no harmful effects are detectable. (Remember how everything in California has a cancer warning?) There needs to be a global optimization process that balances benefits and costs. In that context, it was entirely reasonable and proper to refrain from setting such a guideline at this time.

(PFAS are just one example of things that trigger a panic completely out of proportion to actual risk. Another example is alcohol during pregnancy. The medical community in the US has taken the position, with the support of the government, that the only acceptable level is 0. That is even though women in Western Europe routinely drink moderate amounts of alcohol during pregnancy, with seemingly little ill effect.)

I didn't say that it was the only way to do it. What I said is that the US is currently more democratic than it ever has been. Obama, and later Trump, are the most truly democratic presidents we've ever had. They were chosen by the people, without regard to the traditional elite process that more or less determines the nominee.

Are there residential water filtration systems that would be effective at filtering these out?

I have a water filter in my fridge but no real idea how well it works.

Because we aren't selecting random people from a district, we aren't a democracy? That seems like a strange opinion to have, especially since the definition of democracy is fairly vague, covering basically any system where the people have the authority over their government. And I'd say electing Obama and then Trump, over the screaming temper tantrums of the two separate parties, is good evidence the people still hold authority.