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Leadership experience for candidates is a great qualifier that voters should consider, but the whole point of popular democracy that isn’t restricted to a class is that absolutely anyone could run and even be supported, giving everyone a voice and a chance at power and change. It also gives voters (especially if they’re not restricted to a class) the responsibility to be educated on issues (which often becomes a class issue in itself) and candidates and to organize, which also gives agency. This all leads to populism, which is frequently dangerous, but it’s the alternative to elitism. The logic of monarchism, when it’s not divine right and inheritance squabbles, is that it ideally manufactures the most qualified leaders, as they are groomed for the role from childhood and get a number of leadership nepo positions preparing them to eventually take the throne, all while being able to look at their ancestors for additional experience. The common citizen can never have a preparation for leadership like that, but popular democracy attempts to argue that it is better that leadership not go through that system, as it ensures the leaders who are elected are more authentically of the people (or it would if there wasn’t nouveau riche aristocracy that took power, which is another of popular democracy’s inherent risks).

I don't have replies turned off, the person whose blog you saw my post on does.

Yeah, absolutely anyone can run; people shouldn't support candidates for executive or statewide offices who have no previous experience in public office, because they are not entry level jobs and voters should stop treating public service as an unserious vocation that can be learned on the fly.

I do not respect candidates who felt no need to get involved to try and influence or improve problems in their own backyards for their entire lives by participating in local politics who suddenly decide they should be in charge of a city or a state or a country or should get to decide who sits on the Supreme Court.

People have been dangerously adulterating their products to make a bigger profit for THOUSANDS of YEARS. Rome famously had problems with people selling counterfeit bread and doctored wine.

Neo-Nazis use it. Terrorist organizations use it. For the same reason White Supremacist violence usually takes the form of “Lone Wolf” attacks.

A patient comes in with a flesh eating bacteria that is rapidly spreading up their leg. The only way to save their life is to remove their leg.

So what do you do? To help the patient is to accept that you must also harm them.

You're a good doctor. Of course you remove the leg and save the patient's life, because trying to exercise a choice that will result in no harm is impossible where there are only two bad outcomes, but one is unquestionably worse.

Read theory. Read the commentaries on the theory. If you don't understand, that proves you haven't read enough. If you disagree with any of it, that proves you're a bad person.

Follow the right influencers. Support the right politicians. Follow the leaders of our movement. Until we decide they're bad people, anyway.

March in our protests. Commit to our boycotts. Donate to our causes. Don't ask what we hope to achieve or how we think we're going to get that effect from what we're doing. Only a bad person would ask those questions.