Democracy – A Contested Concept and Project
The electoral process is flawed but probably for very different reasons than you might think! What is really flawed is the system underneath it.
As to democracy, that is precisely what the ultra-right libertarians want to destroy. They have made this quite clear in their writings so it is not a secret. The reason most people don’t know about the libertarian underpinnings of what is playing out, just as they don’t know about what one might call a Christian coup (in the US), is that they don’t bother to look or actively don’t want to. Democracy – always a contested concept and project – has always come at a high price and a very important part of that price is participation. It is not clear to me that representative democracy can ever really work because it is a contradiction in terms. What one would need would be a mixture of a different kind of representative democracy and some component of direct democracy of the Athenian kind or possibly sometimes even of the better tribal kind (there is some anthropological evidence that some tribal behaviour can be quite democratic). The point is that if people want the fruits of civilisation and democracy they must be willing to pay for it. The big problem is that humans weren’t designed for massive inequality. Some difference in status yes, we see that in many species, but not, as far as I know, in a primate. I suppose the gorilla is the nearest to a rather unequal society, but it is still trivial and tiny compared to what we now have. Also, we humans are much closer to chimpanzees (almost identical genetically) and their societies are pretty flat. Even the alpha males can be defeated by a coalition of lesser males as long as they have some higher ranking females on board. I have long thought that if you want to understand humans, best understand chimps first.
Back to human democracy: in fact, as Buchanan, Rothbard, and others make clear, they don’t want democracy at all, they just want power. Power over nature, power over humans, power over everything (just like the Christian dominionists, interestingly enough). They (both radical libertarians and radical Christians) are basically fascists, if not Nazis. I am glad to hear more commentators using the f word and making comparisons with the Reichstag fire. Even though the situation is not identical – in history situations are never identical – but they often have important similarities from which we could learn, if we were willing.
To those who believe that trump won in 2020. No doubt there will be many books and dissertations on this in the future, but I suppose that there is a fundamental epistemological gap, indeed gulf, here – if two different entities disagree about the veracity of the data, it is hard to see how they will ever agree about anything else nor will one of the parties ever be persuaded to change their views.
This reminds me of the amusing but also sadly percipient joke about the two philosophers arguing with each other in some olde worlde town where the upper stories of the buildings nearly touch each other. Each philosopher is in a different building. A wag walking below in the street looks up and says to his friend: it’s no good, they will never agree, they are arguing from different premises.
As far as I can tell building resentment is exactly what the alt-right and Donald Trump want. Regarding this, there was a very interesting piece by Adam Gopnik on radio 4 this morning (10 Jan 2021). If you have ten minutes please give it a listen:
A turning point for democracy? By Adam Gopnik
Https://www.Bbc.Co.Uk/programmes/m000qyxn
I gather that some Trump supporters are a bit grumpy with him and Lindsay Graham etc for throwing them under the bus and suggesting that they might face jail time for their efforts (I wonder how much they will like being in the privatised jail system that they normally like to think of as housing – and hurting – blacks only). They seem surprised. What did they expect? Even Pence apparently is upset at Trump’s treatment of him, despite his unerring ‘loyalty’ over these past four years. Apart from more study of chimps, there should be more study of history.
Thinking about MAGA, I wonder if the real beneficiary of Trump will be China. There is lots of conflicting analysis about China, but so far China has come through the pandemic almost unscathed and their empire is expanding by the day, whereas America’s empire and influence is shrinking, January 6th marking a particular downturn. One shouldn’t underestimate how much weaker America is now – many nations are laughing at America and relishing in US discomfort, but I am pretty sure that behind the laughter they are also greatly emboldened, knowing increasingly that America is a paper tiger, which is now going to have to devote increasing resources to patching up its own wounds rather inflicting wounds on others, which it has been doing since the Mayflower, but particularly in the second half of the 20th century.