Post by gggg gggghttps://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html
The problem seems to lie, for me at least, in the very definition of
"democracy". The people rule. But who are the people? Who were the
"demos"? Am I people? Are trailer-trash people? Are black humans people?
I'm sick of people who declare "I do this in the name of the people".
I'm sick of "I win this award as the people's champion". All I assume
from this is low-life people; people who feel utterly excluded from the
power-house. And where do they come from? Society itself, or some
family's inner working's? Some people with low self esteem?
I can't see any alternative to representative democracy in our modern
mass states. It's not utopia, but it's the best of the constitutions on
offer.
Some Iraqi citizen might disagree; as might someone in Tunisia also.
They'd say that Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi held their country together
about as best it could have been held together. And that our western
ideas have utterly destabilised affairs and let in chaos. And that we
westerners have stuck our unknowing fingers into things we don't
understand; specifically into the mind-set of peoples who see democracy
as nothing more than a licence for immoral behaviour.
I believe that presidential father and son Bush had a mistaken view that
all you had to do was wipe out the dictator and democracy would arise
automatically. Like some kind of phoenix from the ashes. But no! It
didn't happen.
Democracy seems to work only when the populace as a whole has reached a
tipping-point in education; education for all, minimum wage, benefits.
When those at the bottom can see some way upward. A very Marxist view of
things, I know; but that's me and my upbringing.
Ed