Democracy is being dramatically undermined — not by “populists” or “foreign adversaries” but by Western elites. But did we ever really have democracy in the first place? Or was it always a façade?
In the specific case of the USA, during the post war decades, some what counter intuitively, the USA was de-democratizing while at the same time democratizing as certain people (like black people in some big areas of the country) who werent given full access, were being granted full access. You touch on things when you write about how its not just about the vote, in the USA, to some extent in its early decades, but mainly from the 1820s until some point after ww2, we used to have genuinely democratic governance structures that granted o just the vote but also direct participation, it did this through formal state structures, but mostly through other things such as policy variability and publicly accessible mass-member political parties. And, again in the case of the USA, in regards to you worrying that the conditions that enable democracy are absent today, the conditions that led to to democracy developing are actually quite similar to the conditions today, and I even overhear young people sometimes making statements regarding the technical-mechanical design of capital markets, back in the 1820s, that is how our story began
What is democracy? Most people have a very incomplete idea of how the world works. Politics is to a large extent convincing people that what you want to do will work and is beneficial to the country. I once had a teacher who explained democracy as a choice between different sections of the elite. For centuries Western "democracy" was a choice between conservatives and liberals. One representing the landowners and "old money" and the other merchant and industrials. It is a strange phenomena of our times that such distinctions seem to have disappeared. All the main politicians come now from the same networks: WEF, Rhodes and German Marshall scholarships, etc. The bottom-up mechanisms that used to produce politicians no longer work like they used to.
The presence of the Soviet Union and its communism was very beneficial for Western democracy as it proved that another approach was possible. It is possible that China will fulfill a similar role in the future but for the moment too few people take it as a serious alternative.
The so-called "Golden era" of western democracy, also featured:
- nazi style apartheid ("Jim Crow") in what was supposedly the world's biggest democracy, with the victims beaten and killed for peacefully protesting to get treated as human beings instead of animals
- brutal western dictatorships in Portugal and Spain
- western backed brutal colonial regimes in for example Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa, Mozambique, Angola etc
- brutal Western backed dictatorships all over Africa and South America and Asia
- western backed Taiwan basically run as a personal family dictatorship of General Chang Kai-Shek
- An Army General (Eisenhower) in charge of what was supposedly a civilian democracy
- A KKK member (Truman) as in charge of the same country
- A spymaster (Bush) in charge of the same country, followed by his son 8 years later
So indeed, it was all a lie. All of it.
It's fantastic that you cite Agamben and his theory of the "State of Exception" - it is something that people are oblivious to in the current age of shallow discussion on social media, with no foundation in deep reading or understanding of politics and philisophy. But indeed, the State of Exception is why the mask is now totally off in the west
All I know is, no government ever gave anyone any individual rights. Those rights have always existed. A government that seeks to diminish them is a greater or lesser form of tyranny. No tyrants.
In the specific case of the USA, during the post war decades, some what counter intuitively, the USA was de-democratizing while at the same time democratizing as certain people (like black people in some big areas of the country) who werent given full access, were being granted full access. You touch on things when you write about how its not just about the vote, in the USA, to some extent in its early decades, but mainly from the 1820s until some point after ww2, we used to have genuinely democratic governance structures that granted o just the vote but also direct participation, it did this through formal state structures, but mostly through other things such as policy variability and publicly accessible mass-member political parties. And, again in the case of the USA, in regards to you worrying that the conditions that enable democracy are absent today, the conditions that led to to democracy developing are actually quite similar to the conditions today, and I even overhear young people sometimes making statements regarding the technical-mechanical design of capital markets, back in the 1820s, that is how our story began
What is democracy? Most people have a very incomplete idea of how the world works. Politics is to a large extent convincing people that what you want to do will work and is beneficial to the country. I once had a teacher who explained democracy as a choice between different sections of the elite. For centuries Western "democracy" was a choice between conservatives and liberals. One representing the landowners and "old money" and the other merchant and industrials. It is a strange phenomena of our times that such distinctions seem to have disappeared. All the main politicians come now from the same networks: WEF, Rhodes and German Marshall scholarships, etc. The bottom-up mechanisms that used to produce politicians no longer work like they used to.
The presence of the Soviet Union and its communism was very beneficial for Western democracy as it proved that another approach was possible. It is possible that China will fulfill a similar role in the future but for the moment too few people take it as a serious alternative.
The so-called "Golden era" of western democracy, also featured:
- nazi style apartheid ("Jim Crow") in what was supposedly the world's biggest democracy, with the victims beaten and killed for peacefully protesting to get treated as human beings instead of animals
- brutal western dictatorships in Portugal and Spain
- western backed brutal colonial regimes in for example Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa, Mozambique, Angola etc
- brutal Western backed dictatorships all over Africa and South America and Asia
- western backed Taiwan basically run as a personal family dictatorship of General Chang Kai-Shek
- An Army General (Eisenhower) in charge of what was supposedly a civilian democracy
- A KKK member (Truman) as in charge of the same country
- A spymaster (Bush) in charge of the same country, followed by his son 8 years later
So indeed, it was all a lie. All of it.
It's fantastic that you cite Agamben and his theory of the "State of Exception" - it is something that people are oblivious to in the current age of shallow discussion on social media, with no foundation in deep reading or understanding of politics and philisophy. But indeed, the State of Exception is why the mask is now totally off in the west
All I know is, no government ever gave anyone any individual rights. Those rights have always existed. A government that seeks to diminish them is a greater or lesser form of tyranny. No tyrants.
Yes we know nlw, those two bastards Stamer and Trump must be hang. Thos two bastads are participating actively of the massacres of Palestians.
Oops...don't forget Netanyahu.
Don’t forget Hamas.