Democracy DOA : Prognosis up from Dead On Arrival
I am very proud of things I wrote 4 years ago this month (in April of 2007) at TruthRevival.org and related things at Polsci.com (also written that April), two web sites of things that I write. But some of the things which I am most proud of having written were written 8 years ago this month (in April of 2003). The former was written some miles up the coast from here in Lahaina, the latter written some miles down the coast from here in Wailea. The thing about having more time, if you understand time or think you do in the way I like to, if you are lucky, you do not see yourself at the end of the line, the present “capping” the past, but always, always, in the middle or center.
Until Yesterday: Experience, Existence, Whose Universe, Co-Existence
Jared DuBois - Wednesday, April 20, 2011
5dnotes.blogspot.com
Jared DuBois - Wednesday, April 20, 2011
5dnotes.blogspot.com
And within that are the great lessons of Eastern thought, Taoism, Buddhism, and Zen: the need to recognize the limitations of languages, and by extension, of cultures, as contextual, limited in scope to those they were originally developed within or for, but needing constant expansion and having that past, that foundation, being put in new contexts through new experiences and greater histories which they cannot contain without constricting them. Constricted growth is as close to death as it is to life. Growth must be free of the limitations of languages, of single cultures, of single ideologies, of single types of governmental or economic systems, or it is not growth at all, merely attempted sameness, death of better ideas, preventing new words, new concepts, new systems from emerging.
Truth is not found in words. Words like art, like anything in our environment, are attempts to make a representation of truth. The "Western" type of thinking, of an external objectifiable truth to reality has its roots in a wider viewpoint. Among the earliest Greek philosophers, Paramenides among others, knew that thinking was at best an approximation of truth, an elusive search meant to be unending, always sought after, yet forever out of reach. That has nothing to do with the absolutism with which the West has come to be identified with, mainly as an excuse to impose its culture upon others. Parmenides said on truth, "both the unchanging truth behind all that which only seemingly comes and goes from being, and the opinions and perceptions of Man about this in which there cannot be found truth, ... it is necessary for you to see how untruths and misconceptions come to be seen as truth, both (the unchanging truth and our interpretations/changing perceptions of things/subjectivity) together create all experiences."
I began my own philosophical search as a cultural relativist, have moved beyond it, yet am astounded and disheartened beyond measure to see my own culture, America, slam cultural relativism, as something trite, irrelevant, even a fashion without substance. It has become a victim of its own hyped up self-importance, a media preaching that ignorance is better than knowledge. There has been so much of a backlog of falsehood, misrepresentation, propaganda, and outright self- destructive lying to the American people by the Bush Administration of the 21st century that as it begins to get exposed, has the potential to point us, and because of our possibly undue influence or control over the rest of the world, to point the world on a new and better path as we begin once more to speak what we believe to be the truth. We need to try to know what is outside of ourselves, what lies outside of our bodies, minds, beliefs, mindsets and national borders, that is not irrelevant, not without truths of their own which we do not destroy without destroying our own ability to grow.
The truth will begin to be let out more and more. We in the West, we need to demand a media that shows us to us as the rest of the world knows us, so we may see what they do and we do not. To see ourselves from the most points of view. To see ourselves from the most points of approximations or representations of truth that may not be true in individuality, but in sum, in total, in the view we are purposely now kept from seeing, comes as close to the truth as we will ever get without retreating into our own unquestioning assumptions, dogma, propaganda, hubris, and self-delusions. We have become and have been led by the embodiment of such a dark path of willful ignorance. Yet a new path has already begun. It is young yet, this truth telling, and its fate depends upon the actions of millions of others to survive against the legacy we have spun, yet I have faith in it. I have faith that it will grow, that it will survive, and it will dominate the lies, at least in the short term, and at least of the recent past.
Now there's revolution, but they don't knowWordplay - TruthRevival.Org First Post
Jared DuBois - Friday, April 6th, 2007
Truthrevival.org / Polsci.com
This is one of the greatest periods of change in American and world history, and now the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction. Not because the hapless Democrats have taken over a corrupted system, but because people are beginning to realize the need to be told the truth, and hopefully in government, they recognize the need to tell them.
Democracy requires stewardship not by the legislators but ultimately by the public informed about what is really going on. Right now, not even the legislators are being told what is going on and they have made it quite clear they prefer to be out of the loop. The lies must end. The free ride is over.
Without the public demanding both political parties in the US to actually represent their interests over corporate interests, other countries interests, the defense and oil companies interests in ways to the detriment and endangerment of it citizens, then it would be time to admit, the grand experiment in democracy, at least in the United States, is over and exists only in rhetoric and lies, about as factual as the disinformation and propaganda being served to them nightly by faux news broadcasts and talking point op-eds.
The American Spirit of democracy and self-government has been asleep for so long it has rightly been mistaken for dead. Whether that is the case has yet to be proven, but if not, the acting has been uncanny.Giant sucking sound of loss of potential in headwinds: An open road or wind gone out of sails /
RCP Complete
Jared DuBois - Wednesday, April 18th, 2007
Truthrevival.org / Polsci.com
what they're fighting.
Excerpt from "Living in the Past" by Jethro Tull
What little new writing I have done over the past 1½ years has been at my third blog (the other two being TruthRevival.org/Truthrevival.blogspot.com and JaredDuBois.com/jareddubois.blogspot.com) about the notes I wrote while in college and shortly thereafter between 2003 and 2007. Even at that blog, the posts have been few and far between. I do not like the idea of "living in the past" nor looking back for extended periods of time, nor doing what writing about the past often inevitably does, trying to put a new or different spin on it. Plus, after 10 posts spread out over the past 2 years, I still am yet only now getting close to the beginning of the notes.
The original idea for having a separate blog for my notes came from the fact that my main web site which I keep most of my past writings at, POLSCI.COM, was down for many months about 4 years ago, mostly due to financial reasons. Because of that, I thought it would be good if I put my notes back up on the Internet somewhere where I could refer to them or link to them from time to time. As originally planned, there would have been about 6 posts of each of the raw or unedited notes, and maybe some of the compilation pages, all without any additional exposition or comments added. By the time I started the project 2 years later, I decided to take my time with it, (as the leisurely pacing of it has evidenced) and to add a minimal degree of setup for each part, while trying hard not to try to change or amend what is, and should be, the past. But still to add comments here and there when thinking it to be appropriate.
Because I like many paragraphs in the notes, I have, since they began, occasionally mined them for related notes about certain topics, or gathering together ones which I thought were better than others. Often this was done simply by searching for a recurring word. The Democracy DOA collection which I am addressing and reposting here, was compiled when looking back through my notes in 2005. I have added a few others from the notes to that collection below now, some without containing necessarily the word “democracy” in them, because I think they kind of go with it.
After having studied political science, psychology, political psychology, and political sociology spread out over many years and locations from the late 1980’s to the mid 00’s, in Boston, Amherst, Estonia, and Sweden, I have been lucky to have been exposed to a lot of different ideas about democracy, types of government systems, ideas of what governments should do, and what values they should create, nurture, or promote.
But during the Bush years and seeing how the word “democracy” was being frequently used in a blatantly Newspeak opposite of its actually accepted meaning sort of way, most of my notes about the term “democracy” as it was then being used, again the opposite of its actual meaning, seem now to be rather despondent and cynical. But they were a good look at how the notion of democracy was being bandied about and unfortunately, even in this new “Obama Era”, they seem all too true today as well. The definition of democracy, at least in America, has been heavily skewed to the right or left, or rather just off the charts completely into Crazy Town.
What got me to thinking about writing this post was recent writing which I have read over people being despondent about what has become of democracy in America these days, many either pronouncing it ill or even dead as I did. (Chris Hedges, ever the cheery cheerleader these days, “When did our democracy die? When did it irrevocably transform itself into a lifeless farce and absurd political theater?”) Democracy DOA was subtitled, Dead On Arrival. Now I am a tad more hopeful. I would use the DOA today more as a question, Dead Or Alive?
My hope for a renewal of democracy lies predominately outside of the United States at this time. I have long thought democracy best can flourish, develop, and grow outside of the notice or interference of the main powers of the world: Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland; smaller countries fairly wealthy or at least not poor, and mostly to the extent as much as they can be these days: unaligned. My interest in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was/is in the hope that they could have been shown to be experimental testing grounds for new ideas for or had new interpretations of government and democracy, given their somewhat unique histories and perspectives. That was true many years ago, but now lessened due to the predominance of heavily neo-conservative influences, which got in there early and somewhat wrecked havoc on their potential developments in original approaches.
But obviously the focus or hope for democratization now in 2011 is in the unlikely place of the middle-east, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, et all. I say unlikely because, for the reason I think democracy is best developed naturally and therefore best studied in out of the way, smaller, less strategic countries is that democracy developing, or trying to develop, in countries where the major powers of the world have strong interests in, as they say, have many chefs stirring the pot there so to speak.
That is not to say that democracy cannot develop under these conditions, with interventions and interests of one or many major powers of the world meddling, openly or behind the scenes through their covert intelligence services, but it is hardly a “natural evolution” and often, hardly “democratic” in any sense.
The only thing fairly shockingly missing from how the of “peaceful revolutions” in the post-soviet space were talked about or presented, whether the first round in 1989-1992, or the so called “colored revolutions” going on at the second time I was studying, (Georgia, Ukraine, etc.) was the lack of stressing the involvement or interests of the West and of the United States. It was as insane as talking or writing about why communism or socialism struggled in Cuba without talking about the embargo and policies of the United States toward Cuba. Not that Cuba should or would have been more successful, but with an intertwined world, one cannot look at politics of movements developing anywhere without mentioning heavily the outside or world trends, and the influences of the more powerful countries meddling or policies and relations, and their reactions toward those movements. It can be a minor factor in a region's “natural” development, or it can be more defining than practically anything else to the history of those regions.
Noam Chomsky recently covered some of those points well… (emphasis my own in the following)
Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship. ...
The democracy uprising in the Arab world is sometimes compared to Eastern Europe in 1989, but on dubious grounds. In 1989, the democracy uprising was tolerated by the Russians, and supported by western power in accord with standard doctrine: it plainly conformed to economic and strategic objectives, and was therefore a noble achievement, greatly honored, unlike the struggles at the same time "to defend the people's fundamental human rights" in Central America, in the words of the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador, one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the military forces armed and trained by Washington. There was no Gorbachev in the West throughout these horrendous years, and there is none today. And Western power remains hostile to democracy in the Arab world for good reasons. ...
It is small wonder that the "campaign of hatred" against the U.S. that concerned Eisenhower was based on the recognition that the U.S. supports dictators and blocks democracy and development, as do its allies. ...
...Meanwhile the costs of electoral campaigns skyrocketed, driving the parties into the pockets of concentrated capital, increasingly financial: the Republicans reflexively, the Democrats -- by now what used to be moderate Republicans -- not far behind.
Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other commodities since Ronald Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement and would change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost $2 billion, mostly in corporate funding. Small wonder that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is angry and frustrated, but as long as the Muasher principle prevails, that doesn't matter. ...
All of this, and much more, can proceed as long as the Muashar doctrine prevails. As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.Is the World Too Big to Fail? The Contours of Global Order
by Noam Chomsky - Thursday, April 21, 2011
TomDispatch.com
Besides echoing the prevailing cynicism about democracy... “Elections have become a charade”, and pointing out as many are doing, now so clear because the United States' polar opposite reactions to similar circumstances in Libya vs. Bahrain, that the US promotes democracy only or mostly when it is in its strategic interest to do so. How democratic a system, or how much democracy the people of middle-eastern countries get will be determined by many factors, both within those countries themselves, and also to a greater degree, by the major power centers of the world.
This interplay between local peoples aspirations of democracy and what is possible or allowed via the outside environment was mentioned well in another recent article… (emphasis my own in the following)
After a review of the “threats” facing the U.S. in Latin America, influential Treasury Secretary George Humphrey informed his NSC colleagues that they should “stop talking so much about democracy” and instead “support dictatorships of the right if their policies are pro-American.” At that moment with a flash of strategic insight, Dwight Eisenhower interrupted to observe that Humphrey was, in effect, saying, “They’re OK if they’re our s.o.b.’s.”So though as imperfect and skewed, for those within these regions, as their movements toward democracy will be, it is the source of my hope that “democracy” in its traditional meaning, is not yet dead because of many people still willing to risk everything against overwhelming odds to attain it. I am not convinced that economics is not the key motivating factor there, and that much smaller numbers of the demonstrators have any actual notions of what their government should be or how it should operate, other than being generally less repressive toward dissent. And also that they should be less hungry and impoverished, and much of the rest, calling it a “drive for democracy” is more how it is sold to us in the news, but there is still nonetheless a real political movement toward greater democracy there.
It was a moment to remember, for the President of the United States had just articulated with crystalline clarity the system of global dominion that Washington would implement for the next 50 years -- setting aside democratic principles for a tough realpolitik policy of backing any reliable leader willing to support the U.S., thereby building a worldwide network of national (and often nationalist) leaders who would, in a pinch, put Washington’s needs above local ones. ...
In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice summed up this record thusly: “For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy… in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.”Washington on the Rocks: An Empire of Autocrats, Aristocrats, and Uniformed Thugs Begins to Totter
by Alfred W. McCoy and Brett Reilly - April 25, 2011
TomDispatch.com
Also, my hopes for democracy have been somewhat bolstered by the Tea Party Movement in the United States. No, I don’t agree with many of their policies, but within that movement was a genuine hope for true and meaningful reform which Obama also promised but most certainly did not deliver. The Tea Party Movement was of course eventually co-opted by the most wealthy and powerful, as most movements are eventually, as will probably happen in most if not all “revolutionary movements” in the middle-east now, as before in history. But within the people who are organizing and being motivated, however badly it ends up, and it usually does end up poorly, there is still for awhile a renewal of hope.
The so-called “colored revolutions” which I studied in University and out, were not complete failures, but they changed little for most people except who was stealing at the top, and to where the influence or money was heading. One of the best quotes I saw post-orange-movement was a dejected Ukrainian who said to the effect that, “we may as well leave these bastards in power: they are already rich, whereas the new ones have that much more to steal before they are done.” That is how it ends up, and that is what is killing the notion of “democratic change”. That no matter how much you organize, protest, the powerful will step in and “manage” the change you attempt, whatever you attempt, to make you more screwed and worse off than you were before.
That is what became or is becoming of the Tea Party, but that is where most things go. Many years ago I would have been shocked that people could be so twisted as to protest to keep their children from being able to have affordable medical insurance or free medical care, but no more. It is par for a very horrible course, but that is what there is to work with, deal with, and try to make better. The Tea Party was no more a sellout to the Koch Brothers than “Obamacare” was a sellout to the insurance industries, but within or behind both movements there was a desire for change and a mobilization of the public to achieve something, and that inspired and moved many people to become more political and more politically active.
As I wrote here back when Barack Obama first became president, I thought it would take MANY kinds of political movements to EFFECT REAL CHANGE, and even ONES I DO NOT AGREE WITH, which is what has happened and that gives me hope. As I put it then…
It would be easy for me, like many other writers who were opposed to many of Bush's policies, to now rant instead about thinking or predicting what Obama's mistakes in similar veins will be. That "Change we can believe in" will not occur is too safe a bet to make, not to mention pessimism, and that makes it not of interest to me. Though I agree that Obama's supporters should not support him blindly and should hold him accountable to actually following through on his spoken or believed positions on promises of a different world, pressuring which is necessary to make or even to enable him to follow through on that promise or those promises. I simply refute the idea of complaining about mistakes he has not made yet, but most likely will. Plus, he seems more adaptable than most are to changes which will (okay, I will predict that much) be required, even to a surprising degree. And I would not think that he will not be better or smarter next year than he is now, or was last year. Anyone can grow or change, even within the pressure cooker and bubble of the presidency of the US, and even potentially for the better.
The needed changes go beyond even a (US) president's ability to institute them, but not necessarily beyond a movement like the one which got him the job. With growing movements (plural) for political change, if allowed by my country to flourish (a very big "if" as they may actually threaten real and genuine change which even if for the better, the system would not think to allow to occur or be discussed without a verbal war and political persecution like blowback to whistle-blowers), then nothing that needs to be done cannot be achieved. Democracy is based upon and requires cooperation of the general public protesting and/or demanding things to succeed or even to function as a democracy at all, and greater political action and participation of a majority of our citizens is increasingly required in the absence of any counter-weight to the dominating politicized and myopic beltway mentality of the US mainstream press. And that is an engagement which is long, long overdue.
Where things stand today hopefully at best is to begin that necessary broad or broadest possible dialog for change which is more important or as important as any implemented or chosen changes. The dialog will need to be far more inclusive that what is or can be done, or even should be. All things and roads ought to be considered someday and in due time. And for a greater range than ever before, that time is increasingly right now.
As much as consensus is a good thing and necessary, I prefer to embrace also the right of people saying things I disagree with, even despise, than to simply safely swim in a stream of a world finally coming to it senses, hopefully. Both things are necessary to me. What people deride as political correctness is far more dangerous than either side, left or right, anarchist or neo-con, or those of most any political or philosophical stripes realize. Even good ideas and platforms I agree with get carried to extremes in the absence of any countervailing opposition, even wrongly-founded opposition, which prevents totalitarian-like nanny or police states replacing true freedom. What is beyond question to be thought to be right, without proper checks (and the best, most eloquent arguments possible in opposition to it) from those opinions that are greatly (even universally) thought to be wrong, devolves without being checked into a forced compliance and well-intended insanity, and complete devolution of freedom and an open society.Giant sucking sound of loss of potential in headwinds: An open road or wind gone out of sails
Jared DuBois - Sunday, February 1, 2009
Truthrevival.org / Polsci.com
To people on the left who have been so bothered by the Tea Party, not that some of that xenophobia, racism, and being used as tools for Randian billionaires to screw themselves, the poor, the weak, middle-class, and everyone else does not worry me sometimes, but what have progressives done besides roll over and play dead? If it seems astounding that a very small minority of admittedly extremely well-funded number of people can so completely hijack the Republican Party to their own ends, is it not more astounding that the majority of left-leaning members of the Democrats have virtually ceded that they have no power to influence an increasingly right-wing corporate-sponsored “alternative” party? That is in many ways even more sad. Yes I believe in Third parties (though in the American system they are not likely to win without major financial backing), but really, is having the majority of the people, even the majority of those of that party actually to be able to steer the direction of their own party itself, is that really so inconceivable or unmanageable? Or is it just accepting the defeatism of it all, because that is the easiest road to take?
What is even more disturbing than both a majority of Americans, and a majority of progressives, having no interest in or representation by either of the only two national political parties in America, is the systematic undermining of the mechanisms of democracy of itself. I have already written here previously about electronic voting without a paper trail undermining peoples confidence in their “democracies” ("Pulling the Trigger on the Anti-Democracy Gun (May 30, 2009)", and "More Roadblocks to More Verifiable and Honest Elections (November 22, 2009)") but under Obama it has gotten far worse, not better, despite the fact that the Democrats have often been the most disaffected by under-representation or potential voter fraud. Still, even with control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress, absolutely nothing was done for two years to require American elections on a national level to become more verifiable or accountable to the public. Hope that the Republicans will do anything to guarantee more openness and accountability for potentially faked and easily falsified numbers is even more remote now.
But the icing on the cake of my continued concern for the future of democracy also comes from the United States recently. The Michigan Governor’s ability to fire all town and local government officials and then appoint a “manager” with unlimited legal authority to sell off local property, void contracts, basically abolishing the entire concept of local government and control, the very foundation of government the United States and other older democracies were based on. The United States has three levels of government which came in the order of 1) Local governments, 2) State governments under the British Empire, and the third, the National government which replaced the British throne as the central controller mechanism.
To put this Michigan “revolution” in anti-democracy in perspective, when I was in University most recently the largest shock in a similar vein to that was Russian President Putin having his legislature give himself the power to remove the elected Governors in the Russian Federation. The last word in that previous sentence is important to that, "Federation". Russia also has a similar system to the United States in that it was/is at least in theory, a federation of semi-independent regions. Removing a level of more local elections than national was viewed, and rightly so, as disturbing. Without getting into the pluses and minuses of whether that was a good move or not, it could not help but send out warning signs of the potential there for a rollback of democracy.
What is happening in Michigan today is not only in the same vein as what concerned so many about Putin’s action, it is far, far beyond it, and not just least of which because it is happening in America. And it could not be happening in America without the existing corrosion and politicization of the courts to even have gotten this far off the ground. It is worse because it is at the most local level of government which is the most accountable and which the citizenry typically enjoyed the most ability to influence, which gave them whatever semblance of power over their own lives they still might have thought they had.
As Rania Khalek recently put it… (emphasis my own in the following)
Disaster capitalism is on display around the country, as legislators use the debt crisis afflicting their states as an opportunity to hollow out the public sector. In Michigan it’s being packaged as “emergency financial management” by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who is looking to exploit an economic crisis that has left his state with a severe budget deficit. In March, Snyder signed a law granting state-appointed emergency financial managers (EFM) the ability to fire local elected officials, break teachers’ and public workers’ contracts, seize and sell assets, and eliminate services, entire cities or school districts, all without any public input. He claims these dictatorial restructuring powers will keep Michigan communities out of bankruptcy.So to sum up, though I am more hopeful about democracy in general than I was 6 years ago when I wrote Democracy DOA from the notes below, not necessarily still believing it is dead or even dying, I do see it as under fire still as perhaps never before. It is perceived widely as weak or crippled, and the vultures are circling. But I am beginning to see to balance that, there is an increasing willingness of people to step up and fight for what little of it remains. And without a doubt, what is killing it is not the rich, the powerful, or the major powers or corporations. It is dying by the redefinition of it by those actors, and by the willingness of the public around the world to sometimes accept these redefinitions.
Michigan currently has unelected EFM’s in charge of the schools in Detroit, as well as the cities of Pontiac, Ecorse, and Benton Harbor. In Benton Harbor, the city’s elected mayor and city commissioners were stripped of all power by unelected EFM, Joseph Harris. Harris issued an order saying the city commissioners have no power beyond calling meetings to order, approving minutes, and adjourning meetings. This decimation of local democracy is spreading. Robert Bobb, the EFM that has taken over Detroit’s public school system, sent layoff notices to all of the district’s 5,466 unionized employees. Bobb says he will exercise his power as EFM to unilaterally modify the district’s collective bargaining agreement with the Federation of Teachers starting May 17, 2011.
ACLU of Michigan Executive Director Kary Moss said the law raises concern about separation of powers, its impact on minority communities, collective-bargaining rights and privatization of services. She is absolutely correct. Faced with a deficit, emboldened EFMs can sell off public property to developers, close public schools and authorize charter schools, and void union contracts with literally no recourse for local, tax-paying residents or their elected officials to stop it.by Rania Khalek - Wednesday, April 20, 2011
CommonDreams.org
The only thing that can turn that around is constantly increasing the political vocabularies and knowledge of people about politics and what is at stake in that debate in every country, and increasing the willingness of people to act out of those beliefs. To protest, to become more involved, and for the “powerful” countries to not attempt to put down such protests at home when directed at themselves, (THE UNITED STATES HAS REFERRED TO ITS OWN ANTI-WAR PROTESTS AS ‘SOFT TERRORISM’) but instead to see them as important, and as necessary, as the democracy movements in the more oppressed regions of the world today. Because if not, if we accept ANY governments opinions that its people are not being repressed, then of course there would be no such thing as repression even as it spreads everywhere, because no country would ever admit it to itself. Political protest movements and an increasingly active public engaged in politics is required to have any level of effective democracy at all, but apathy and the acceptance of individual powerlessness (The best compilation of my notes on politics I still think is the fearlessness page “Fearlessness take back power- Fear sells out Freedom for ‘Security") is killing it.
Best of the Notes - Democracy DOA (Dead On Arrival)
These are the notes on Democracy, unlike most note recombinations, these are not all in chronological order (one of the last one was put first), and many of them, but not all, are repeats, also appearing in POWER!
Spreading democracy in this part of this century is just an excuse to put in people that are loyal to the corporations interests in strategic or untapped countries. People have forgotten what democracy meant before parties were arranged by economic interests and have yet to learn what democracy will mean when the public again regains control. Until then the word "democracy" means a spoiled fish which smells really really bad, unfortunately. Dictatorships had more opportunities for change than these so-called "democracies" because at least when overthrown, people would have a chance for real democracies to be established. These machines which call themselves democratic, by co-opting the language and the cause, conveniently suppress the main avenue of change, and leave people feeling helpless and without direction, wanting what they think they have but know they don't have simultaneously. You want democracy? You have democracy, remember? Now go away!
Basically corporations idealize dictatorships as the best form of government. All variables are removed leaving complete predictability and minimal risk (written in response to initial analysis following the conclusion of the non-violent democratic revolution in Georgia, that it would negatively effect investment there whereas the previous rigged election would have been better for attracting investors to the country)
Elections are the parts of democracy people get to see and convince them they have a say in their governance. How those choices are selected to be put before them are determined by non-democratic means by economic interests. Which choices are given as well as how many inevitably frames their outcomes. Those who can influence these without having their hands being seen directly control governments. Leaders are reduced to personalities who can best push an agenda, and those personalities know they will only get to act the part, unless they dare to believe they got there on their own merits alone. The more willing they are to follow "advice", the more inevitable their rise to power becomes.
Learning from the history of the Soviet Union- if you call yourself a democracy and go to the trouble of having elections, people might one day actually expect them to be fair, or giving the party in power at least a snowball's chance in hell at losing.
Democracies are now structured in ways that the number of bodies (people) a group has is far less significant than the amount of dollars (money) a group has. Minority rule of the most advantaged is now considered normal. The idea that a government would actually have its priorities first and foremost concentrated on the bulk of its populations, usually less affluent, is now considered "populist", extreme, and often dangerous to the current accepted way of business as usual in who governments ought to respond to, or consider whose interests first.
All the things you think are impossible, healing the rift between Christianity and Islam, or even between Judaism and Islam, making China or Russia a real democracy, you need to focus on what makes these things seem impossible, who or how many different groups would oppose such reconciliations or integrations into wider, more expansive and less divided new common communities, and new stronger more diverse common cultures which would emerge from (the) growing partnerships. Once you can identify who would work against such aims, you see it isn't impossible at all, just against a lot of powerful groups in the presents' interests. The only problem is that divided present has few futures which connect back to it, or seen from the present, little hope of surviving long in such a divided house, which will inevitably either unite, or collapse on everyone.
The more power a single person has, the more likely it is to be used indiscriminately and without need for justification or explanation. Rule by committee or consensus may seem unwieldy but it makes abuse of power less likely. Full power sharing is democracy, but depending on the model, makes abuses inevitable when one person ever is in a position of being able to influence every other branch, directly or indirectly. All structures to prevent this from happening are falling like dominoes.
Those who are not willing to risk everything to work towards democracy or to keep it from being eroded or stolen do not deserve it. No matter how rich or poor their country is, no matter how free or controlled their media is, choice if any cannot last long without that, or has already been lost.
When any organism gets too big it subdivides. When any group, political, religious, governmental, gets too powerful and near universal, factions within it develop. The opposite of that happening is greater control, less freedom, and dictatorship. The more it happens and the greater the factionalization, the more control people have over their own lives and destinies. Democracy (supposedly decentralized control in the extreme, far from present reality) means having everyone's voices being heard and counting EQUALLY. By this measure, every day and every way we are moving away from that. Yet new ways must emerge to keep plurality of opinions alive or what is left of freewill is lost.
Freedom is a dream and the right to dream what you wish. Democracy without strict spending limits on advertising and equal treatment in all media is a sick joke.
Of all nations, Russia and China have the greatest potentials for advancing freedom (and democracy). For obvious reasons, discount China. Only people who know they are not free can best know what freedom should mean. Those who believe they are the most free are the easiest to enslave for they can be taken further and longer trustingly down the darkest paths.
Real freedom for the West, real democracy for Russia, and religious tolerance and renaissance in China, and universal literacy with free e-books or free libraries easily accessible for all in every country. A modest start.
Mantra of governments including so-called democracies, of the 21st century: If people can't see it or read about it, it isn't there. The Control-The-Information Age. The only crime (governments can be guilty of) is when their strings are showing.
Event A - a sizable majority of people, including most poor, want something to be the policy of the government against the interests of a smaller minority, including wealthy elites. Event B, it actually becomes policy. How thick is the wall, how much of an obstacle is the government itself in separating events A and B, even in so-called democracies that supposedly represent their (all of their) peoples' interests? In a real democracy, there would be no wall between A and B, and helping A on to becoming B would be the job of the government, not in helping trying to prevent it. In the U.S., that wall is like Fort Knox. It teaches other governments to build better walls between A and B. There ought to be a new name for token or sham democracies. Olihypo-ocracies, with puppet parliaments. One elected representative to another, "Who's your sponsor?" (Democracies which respond to the will of most people, which actually function as democracies, are called "populist" governments (India), and that is very bad, shame, shame, overthrow, overthrow. We don't want that idea to spread and give anyone else's overwhelmingly poor majorities the idea they might be able to influence their governments to think of them first, or even think of them at all, if they all worked together. Welcome, take a good look at the new model, the all new anti-democratic version of "democracy". Its shiny! Its plush! All your neighbors will envy you!)
That societies want to have some smart and others not smart, docile, and politically dumb as a stump, is not new. Its just always a balance between admitting it openly as an objective, accepting it quietly as a necessity, or hypocritically aiming to make all more active and aware of their rights yet working against it as well because doing so means they would wake up and demand a system which takes into account their needs more than the system which fostered them and kept them stupid. All change, even making people literate and democratic participants in ruling themselves, will cost someone or all who were rich before in that society to have to pay more as a result. That what is left of democracies promotes this change, except in regions where it is politically advantageous to their pocketbooks, is getting downright laughable. They keep up the rhetoric of democratic change, but it is only a tool of setting up systems where the will of the public is largely irrelevant to the economic interests of themselves, which is why they are "helped" in the first place. The problem is governments in the West do not wish to admit to themselves they have become all but irrelevant to these forces as well, and are well paid not to in case they ever have any doubts about it. (And are well controlled now.) Those not bought off or not skilled in doublethink denial, they eventually resign once they know it is all bullshit, and there is nothing they can do about it.
The term "democracy" has become so twisted to meaning the opposite of its definition to some by the rhetoric, I have already seen hints that some (in America) think West Europe ought to be "democratized" (i.e. invaded by America) overlooking the fact that their governments, as well as any others and better than most, already represent the wills of their people. Democracy as an agenda is being promoted as when "we" like who is in charge, not necessarily when their people do, which is why dictators are often supported and widely popular Presidents almost openly are attempted to be deposed with our blessings, as with Venezuela. I have no problem with stronger nations imposing their wills upon weaker ones so much as the sickening of my stomach to hear it is being done for their own good and not ours, and in the name of "democracy". The hypocrisy has poisoned any semblance of truth or meaning.
The turning point in history came when the West was willing to get into bed with a horrible dictatorship in China for profit-based motives without requiring political changes and, for many reasons, some good, some bad, turned our backs on Russia when it attempted to become a legitimate democracy. We have proved time and time again our businesses prefer economic dictatorships, where economic policies cannot be changed regardless of the will of its people. Only this it seems is considered a stable investment region and democratic debates about its economic policies or direction for the future, are considered bad. Democratic change is a secondary goal to profit, when it is even attempted rather than suppressed, all the while saying how much we want them to have it. Politicians have no consciences. Money is their first and only true love.
Suicidal in a free speech sort of way - if enough people pretend they have free speech and say what they really think without fear, someday some WILL gain it, though many will have to risk everything. The West gave up free speech when they proved they were not willing to risk shit to keep it, and now are more watched than Malaysia with their governments studying North Korea for good ideas. Maybe not Europe yet, but sure as hell, the United States. People know better than to criticize the government now. It is no longer a safe course of action. People wonder why the current Chinese young won't risk their lives for democracy, with the US having sold ludicrous attack helicopters with machine guns to the Beijing police departments, they know no one of consequence would care. Convergence in governments has occurred, and the more ruthless models won as always. Almost always anyway.
To imagine freedoms and know of them beyond what your government allows or wants you to think about is to begin seeing a wider view, not of the world how it is but how you might think it could be or should be. Once upon a time, some governments understood this as good. That was before they wanted to preserve the present at all cost because in deprivation, there is more power. But the desire grows within those who can see or know those more honest worlds of more intellectual freedoms, and it cannot be destroyed by any government no matter how totalitarian it becomes in trying to control what people think about freedom or define freedom to mean by controlling society and the media, even if it imagines itself to still be a democracy. That makes the dictatorship stronger, the hypocrisy, but true freedom cannot be forgotten once tasted, and the heart and soul remember even after the mind has been cleansed of it. If any people were ever willing to accept their governments definition of freedom, the Soviet Union would never have collapsed, feudalism would not have collapsed, slavery and serfdom would never have been abolished, and democracies would never have arisen, even if they have since abandoned the principle that the people count more than the economic interests, and decry "populism".
The world may never become a democracy and would prefer never to think it would never wish to be one. Some countries are able to get all the resources from anywhere they wish without having to take care of or listen to the people of that region and make them equal citizens in the decision making process or treat them as they would their own. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Exploitation is not a side effect, it is the defining model of how people relate to each other, and have institutionalized it. I know of many better societal models and higher levels of democracy. The people though will always have the lowest level of participation they are willing to accept and have the greatest level of control and manipulation as those in power think they can get away with.
The center of trust, whether in yourself or in others, that you know what is right for them better than they do, when those times and on those issues, they do not match. That is difference between despots and those who truly believe in democracy and freewill beyond their own lies and minds.
The "frontrunner" and presumptive nominee of both parties in the US is determined long before the primaries by the major corporations. With both choices in an election determined and hand-picked by the corporate interests, people are right to wonder where they come in other than to rubber-stamp one body with interchangeable faces capable of talking out of either side of its mouth as long as it eats the same thing with it, money, and serves the same master, money.
The stronger you are, the more power you have, the greater the desire to rule, the need to rule. I know that insatiable feeling too well. There is another to balance that, the desire to impart that power to others, to make them stronger, eventually your equals, to give them more control. People always do the former while promising to do the latter, one day. The problem I have now is with the lies. Electronic voting, sham democracies, rigged elections, electoral systems where the public's will is manipulated by powerful groups so easily and often it is meaningless. They have no power, and are losing any real hope of ever gaining any power over their governments as well. Those who should guard against this, those who are supposed to have stopped it from deteriorating this much, have all been corrupted or blackmailed, either way, side-lined. Those who talk of giving power to the people, democracy, are making sure the blueprints ensure they will never have any power to challenge them or their heirs. That is what power is all about, keeping it and never sharing it, but making everyone think they still have it or never will lose it. Yet those who lose it, allow everyone to be beaten down never assuming it will be them and their children, are only getting what they deserve for being weak and stupid. It is not like they were not told or did not see it coming. (I saw a quote to the effect, completely unchallenged, that a committee in a country determined that voting over the Internet was as safe and tamper proof as voting in voting stations. Maybe if you live in Florida. The reality is there has probably never been a generation in history more willing to sell their children and all other generations into virtual slavery having absolutely NO political rights via any means of controlling their own governments so they, the leadership, can make a quick buck off of selling them out in the present, all while promoting "democracy" and thinking they will be remembered as heroes of it. Self-delusion is after all a small price to pay for getting rich at the expense of others freedom whom you will never meet.)
People are given choices in an election that are as opposed to each other as the most powerful in the country wish those choices to be. Never an election about which type of system, fundamental changes, or increased fairness. Usually politicians offered as "choices" are the same model car, only you get to pick the color.
The EU has neither the institutions nor the rallying cause for its existence to capture the imagination and allegiance of even its own citizens. In its present form as a European Union of democracies, it has become as insignificant beyond a wealthy trade block as (politically speaking) the African countries are merely to the future, the aboriginals of the world to be exploited and wiped out at will. As a global player, the EU has vanished from significance in its present form because it has shown it has no future and very little past. Without a firmer sense of identity and purpose, all the dreams it had to influence humanity and the future have died, and its ideals it sought to enshrine also face now an uncertain and precarious future divided.
When no one is allowed by law or public pressure, to argue the other side of ANY (particular) issue, it (that particular issue) gets progressively more and more extreme in position constantly unchallenged, and debate becomes more and more unthinkable until everyone is simply told what to believe by the most extremist people possible.
Democratizing societies is often an excuse to divide them. Once different groups are made to give preferences to each other, make rules which benefit one subsection of that society at the expense of another or all others, it becomes easy to pick that group of society to give support to and buy influence with. Even if not giving money directly to the parties, rich outside countries can easily identify who belongs to which group when deciding who to do business with and thereby legally make them wealthy in the process, and businessmen within the country begin to take the hint as to which parties or ideologies are the most profitable, and will make them the most powerful because of outside countries preferring to deal with those.
The media stranglehold likely to get us all killed, the public debate in America, when existent at all which now even this is not, is which party's "different" "Bold Ideas" to get us out of the world crippling downward spiraling situation, with machine-like unthinking polls and pundits alike whose thinking processes are limited to left, right, and now the "neither left nor right" neo-con neo-fascist "majority" ideology, which of these ideologies' jockeys, these cookie-cutter prepackaged types of ideological state-approved islands of thinking embodied in parrot talking suits, out of whom which one of them should try or can bring about a stable world in light of constantly escalating weapons of mass destruction, both present ones and damningly new types to come? The blindness and myopicness of it all is both frightening and hilarious at the absurdity of it all. Cheers.
Engineering civilizations- while I reject the Marxist view of a centralized economy, for civilization to proceed for hundreds of years more into the future, governments have to step up and eliminate the power vacuum that has been filled by non-elected non-responsible to their societies as a whole private business interests they can no longer gain any influence over or regulate. The fate of humanity cannot be left to economists who see unemployment as "a political problem, not an economic problem". Some group in power ought to see people's interests first, not view them in terms (other than rhetorically) as superfluous or irrelevant. Others in history, too many to name, thought in terms of economists, when solving unemployment by just ridding oneself of an "excess" of its population through wars or other means. A workable sustainable system will not just appear by itself, be justified or come about in a economics only based model, nor by the result of market forces alone. It requires thought, imagination, and above all, making it not only a serious priority, but the number one aim of all governments for it to have a chance of succeeding by drawing them into a vociferous, real, and unending debate. The best forms of government 500 years from now require a level of education and participation which would no more work in any country today than democracy can flourish in uneducated impoverished regions of the world of today. The goal therefore cannot be to give people a better model of how to live, treat each other, but to find one that can both adapt to the present circumstances while moving them toward those more just models, and above all, keep humanity from committing suicide before they can discover and embrace those better models on their own.
The most ideal forms of government are not defined by what they are at any given point but by their willingness to completely rethink themselves and, if necessary change accordingly, even to something else entirely but keeping and advancing the means to communicate on new changes and preserve that adaptability. Like everything else, its value is in the search, not the actuality. All forms of government will always be flawed, incomplete, unfair to many, and ultimately are provisional upon sets of circumstances always in flux. To keep all variables to change itself, or even most, under control or accounted for to preserve any present form, it ultimately is totalitarian, however benevolent its face may seem. If change and adaptation of structures are necessary, the ability to rethink things, even everything, is like a release valve for discontent which leads to extremism and even ultimately to terrorism. As long as the means to achieve autonomy are structural and real and realizable within ones lifetime, and one has faith in that chance for positive change being more likely than what can be achieved through violence, peaceful change will always more often be preferred eventually when passions have time to cool.
© 2003-2005 by Jared DuBois
Enough living in the past... Back to the Future, Marty...
Ok. Once more, living in the past. I can't resist...
© Copyright 2011 Jared DuBois
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posted by Jared DuBois | 4:13 PM
