John Leguizamo Sounds Alarm About Media Divide: If You Can’t Agree on Facts ‘You Can’t Have a Democracy’

Actor John Leguizamo told SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah that democracy is in danger, in part because of the divide created by the consumption of certain kinds of media.

On Friday’s edition of The Dean Obeidallah Show, the host talked with Leguizamo about the state of our democracy, and the actor sounded the alarm while making an observation about the way people consume media.

Dean: You know, you’ve been outspoken in the past on politics. How do you think America is doing right now? I mean, are we ending? Is it over? What’s going on?

Leguizamo: Oh my God.

Dean: I really feel like we’re near the end.

Leguizamo: I know, bro. I mean, I never thought in my lifetime that I would have the fear of the end of democracy in America. I mean, our democracy was never perfect. It was never, it wasn’t completely functioning. But it is the best human experiment in the history of humankind.

America is imperfect, but it’s the best imperfect in the world, and you feel sometimes like, Oh my god, are we on the verge of losing it? Because of the digital revolution, all revolutions, the industrial revolution, whatever revolution brings huge, cataclysmic change and uncomfortable change, you know, and we’re in that point.

Politics and Facebook and the divides, and we’re all we’re all watching only the news that we believe in. So we’re only reinforcing our own thoughts. We’re not sharing the same facts. And how do you run a democracy? If you say this pen is blue and I say it’s black, we can’t agree that this is black, you can’t have a democracy. And that’s the that’s the place we’re at right now. I mean, I’m hoping. That America is stronger than that. I know the Constitution is a beautifully written document, but it’s still just a piece of paper that we all voluntarily agree to follow, but we don’t have to.

Dean: Right.

Leguizamo: You know, it’s not written in stone, it’s not a natural law. It’s just an agreement.

Watch above via SiriusXM.