The Failure of Democracy #

The Paradox of Democracy #

“The first question of government is a question of trust. As Confucius told his disciple Tsze-Leung, three things are needed for government: weapons, food and trust. If a ruler can’t hang on to all three, he should give up weapons first and food next. Trust should be guarded to the end: without trust we cannot stand”. Onora O’Neill

Democracy is a form of government in which the only absolute supreme power is vested in well informed people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. As such it can easily be debauched by demagogues and fear mongers.

Noam Chomsky in “Manufacturing Consent” claimed that “propaganda was to democracy as the bludgeon to dictatorship.” Due to the party system in most democracies, Chomsky claims all we ever get is a choice between the lesser of two evils.

Looking at some of the leaders democracy has thrown up, (Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, Trump, Boris Johnson, Abbott, Morrison…) due to fraudulent electioneering and media manipulation, (especially Murdoch gutter tabloids and Fox/Sky News) raises concerns about the efficacy of voting. Any uninformed, misinformed or disinformed vote is an invalid vote.

Early Mediterranean History demonstrates that the rise and fall of city states is determined by the degree of equality enjoyed by the general public. Prosperity is tied to equality in areas of politics, economics, social standing and education. As soon as disparity becomes evident, faith, confidence and trust begin to erode and the city state begins its decline.

Egypt’s dynasties lasted for almost 4000 years, because most Pharaohs realised that equity was their highest order of governance. Instead of capricious gods, their god Maat represented equitable justice.

According to Victor Ehrenberg, Democracy’s seminal origins may have germinated from 7thC Sparta’s Warrior Assembly against the resistance of kings and elders. When the citizen soldiers loyal military might, saved the city state from invaders, they began to demand equal rights with the nobles.

“Tyretaeus used the words of Rhetra as the foundation of this ideal of eunomia, of good order, a satisfactory distribution of power and a loyal consensual attitude on the part of its citizens.”

Sparta was never ruled by Tyrants.

The Athenians were the first to sort out their differences by way of rhetoric rather than by sword and shield. But the Greek city-state’s radical experiment of devolving kratos (or power) to the demos (the people) was better than the alternative; arbitrary rule by strongmen, or warlords, or eventually by kings who were no more than the strongest warlord left standing when the last throat had been cut. They usually attributed divine divine intervention claiming divine authority.

But the democracy, dating back to sixth century B.C. Athens, due to the genius of Solon, is not the same as the one we enjoy today. It was direct participatory decision making rather than the representative one favoured by Western Civilisation. Simply voting every few years is not real democracy.

The Roman Republic , established after expelling the Etruscan Kings in 504, rejected one man rule and gave voices to the Plebeians. By 433 BCE, they established laws etched on 12 Stone Tablets for all to see.

Machiavelli, an unjustly maligned and misunderstood figure with valuable political insights, based on Livy’s Roman Republic, resonate as strongly today as they did in his time.

Western democracy originates from the English Civil War from 1640 – 1660 where thousands of citizens died in a struggle between a monarch and his people over the divine right of kings.

According to Professor Emeritus, John Klassen, Western democracy owes much to the ideas of the Englishman, John Locke, who formulated the basic ideas of modern democracy almost entirely in humanistic terms. Humans established political society to protect all citizens equally. He influenced proclamations such as the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Bill of Rights in 1791, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789.

These texts articulate that humans elect an assembly of men to represent them and its laws are the will of the people. God exists, but government makes and enforces laws entirely for the public good without interest in religion. The insightful minds of the 17(th) and 18(th) centuries articulated principles that help hold a political community or nation together. Public officials from head of state to minor clerks undertook to uphold the political community’s basic principles and the will of its people as expressed in law. These texts contain magnificent words written to describe what it means to be human.

But after 200 years do we have a true democracy of the people, by the people and for the people?

The establishment is still cosy, and the vested interests are still active. A handful of powerful people still direct a lot of the traffic, and there is still far too much information suppressed by people who regard democracy as a rhetorical flourish. Marni Cordell, editor of Crikey.com

The critical issue in all forms of government is its commitment to public good. A benevolent dictator is better than a democratically elected government that rules in the interests of a select few who put it into power. Singapore is often held up as an example of an autocratic state that succeeds because it appears to put the interests of it citizens at a high level.

Citizens or subjects #

Shakespeare delineates between subjects, commoners and citizens. Citizens are entitled to rights balanced by obligations to the rest of society.

In 1994, Paul Keating enacted legislation that changed the oath of allegiance from the monarchy to the commonwealth.

The role of citizens is to penetrate the established version of events and tell unpalatable truths that expose establishment propaganda, or ‘official drivel’. (The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism)

It’s a paradox of democracy that the best way to defend it is to attack it, to ask more of it, by way of criticism, protest, and dissent. (Jill Lepore)

John Keane show how its role in fomenting revolutionary fervour in America and France spread to the rest of the world.

After defeating Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo, the Monarchies of Europe used the Congress of Vienna to turn back the clock and restore themselves back on their immune thrones.

Nietzsche on Democracy #

That, if you tell everyone that they’re equal, people who are capable of more and better and greater, will eventually internalise this belief that they’re just equal to everyone else. And so they will stop aspiring, stop trying to do more, better and greater things.

Nietzsche’s was very worried about democratisation which he sees spreading through modern Western Europe, as a levelling force, and it’s a levelling-down force. So he worries that the more democratisation we have, the more mediocrity we’re going to have.

Oscar Spengler’s, Decline of the West, 1918, worldview took a dim view of democracy as the type of government of the declining civilization.

He argued that democracy is driven by money and therefore easily corruptible. Spengler initially supported the rise of a strong-willed leader type of government as the next phase after democracy fails.

W.B. Yeats too formed a view that the threat to order came not from Nazism or Communism (he supported fascism and Mussolini) but from Democracy – “the mob” – “this filthy modern tide” . Leaders only came from the aristocratic class.

H. L. Mencken displays cynical views Democracy

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
All the odds were on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre’. It was the logic of democracy, he said, that the people would one day get their heart’s desire and put a ‘downright moron’ in the White House.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. ……….

Totalitarianism became the preferred form of government after WWI in Europe, with the Bolsheviks in Russia, 1917, Mussolini and the Fascists in Italy, 1922, Hitler’s Nazi Party in Germany,1933 and Franco in Spain,1938. All enjoyed support from leading figures, such as King Edward VII, Oswald Mosely, the charismatic Labour demagogue of England, Robert Menzies of Australia and many others. Leaders like Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt fought the second World War to reinforce the supremacy of democratic nations over any form of autocracy.

While understandable, the widespread belief that George W Bush fulfilled Mencken’s prophecy has proved premature.” The Shortlest Daily

John Lee, an authority on foreign affairs, compares the malaise of democracy not to that of the 1930’s. He claims from the 1970’s to the 1990’s more than 30 countries moved to more democratic models, including East Germany and Russia, but that lately a reversal trend of more authoritarian governments is on the rise. He cites as examples, China’s Xi Jingping’s abolition of presidential terms, the Philippine’s Rodrigo Duterte’s 80% approval rating despite his illiberal extrajudicial executions, Turkey’s Erdogan and his increased power, Myanmar’s military junta holding Aung San Suu Kyi, hostage.

The exception appears to be Singapore. While a one party autocracy, it appears focussed on the general welfare of all.

One can argue that even in the most democratic countries, anaemic leaders are captives of their parties. Trump, despite his boorishness, is the exception.

Democracy has subverted fixed ways of deciding who should enjoy power and privilege, and why. For in a democracy people are encouragedto do something radical: to come together as equals, to determine their own lives and futures.

Transparency in government requires more than duplicating existing laws and new commissions. It needs real courage and resolute, enforcing leadership.

Any secretive justice system, indicates civil liberties are under attack. If you’re not concerned, you’re not paying attention to fulfill your responsibilities as a citizen. Liberty requires eternal vigilance.

All citizens need to question whether our elected representatives are meeting their responsibilities in regulating Judges or whether the gulf between the professions of various legal measures and their actual efficacy widens. John Keane coined the term monitory democracy for instruments of public monitoring and scrutinising of government power.

Paticipatory democracy demands more than just fronting up to elections - we all need to ensure our representatives are true to their calling and represent public interests.

Tom Nichols, STAFF WRITER of The Atlantic feels:

Many Americans—of both parties—have become untethered from reality. When the voters become incoherent, electing leaders becomes a reality show instead of a solemn civic obligation.

Low-information voters are a normal part of the political landscape; in the 21st century, democracies face the added danger of disinformation efforts from authoritarians at home and hostile powers overseas.

Joe Biden presides over an economic “soft landing” that almost no one thought could happen, and his approval rating drops to 33 percent—

In 2024, Americans felt worse about the economy than they did in April 2009. The key word is feel, because by any standard remotely tied to this planet, it is delusional to think that things are worse today than during the meltdown of the Great Recession. As James Surowiecki (a contributing writer for The Atlantic) dryly observed on X about the comparison to 2009,

“It’s true that if you ignore the 9% unemployment rate, the financial system melting down, the millions of people being foreclosed on and losing their homes, and the plummeting stock market decimating people’s retirements, it was better. But why would you do that?”

For many reasons, people often say things are bad when they’re good. Even during the best times, someone is hurting.

Quotes on Democracy #

The corruption of democracy begins with the corruption of thought—and with the deliberate undermining of reality.

“Our democracy and its media will rise and fall together” Joseph Pulitzer

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is merely rule by the electable aristocracy. Rousseau

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always rely on the support of Paul. George Bernard Shaw

Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. James Bovard 1996

There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour. Benjamin Disraeli

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. Plato, ancient Greek Philosopher

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man and our politicians take advantage of this by pretending to be even more stupid than God made them. Bertrand Russell, 1951

“No man’s life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session”. Mark Twain 1866.

These are strange, heady days. As the American wit Will Rogers said long before the advent of Donald Trump:

“people are now treating their comedians seriously and their politicians as a joke”. John Ivison – National Post

David Van Reybrouck believes the rise of Donald Trump, and Brexit indicated we are facing a major crisis of democracy - a democratic fatigue syndrome due to a fundamental disconnect between representative democracy and the people. The symptoms he cites are low voter turn out, declining party membership and government paralysis.

It is my contention that our representatives have lost control of how we are governed. It has been usurped by vested interests beyond the reach of elected representatives. Barack Obama, despite good intentions has found it virtually impossible to change things. Donald Trump claimed he would fix the problems.

The Bush administration, Canada, Australia and England tend to elect governments who owe favours to powerful vested interests. Murdoch, through his vast media empire, claims he decides which government is elected. This debauches the will of the people.

As Mark Triffitt demonstrates below, one of the interesting facets of China’s political system today is that beneath the rock of China’s one-party state is a fascinating experiment in political innovation. In essence, the Chinese Communist Party (to avoid another Tiananmen Square) has been quietly instituting a major program of public participation and grassroots decision-making through town meetings, community-based assemblies and what we would recognise in the West as large-scale focus groups. At times they appear more sensitive to public disquiet than some democracies.

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis points out the deficiencies of our present day political systems:

There is no doubt that most politicians are well intentioned, but the way our system currently works means that their focus is too often on winning and retaining office: the electioneering imperative.

Democracy is not elections, even though every manual on the subject tells us otherwise. Campaigning and electioneering now are so synonymous with democracy, we can’t imagine anything else. We’ve lost sight of how democracy was originally conceived.

People vote on the basis of perceptions which are misleading, ingrained and often against their own best interests.

The American Founding fathers may have broken the shackles of monarchy, but they entrenched divisionary politics. They rejected ‘democracy’ - the Greek model of non-elected government - preferring a ’natural aristocracy’ of elite, landed gentry, voted into office.

Increasingly the subject of rising doubt underlined by growing citizen distrust with elected representatives and governments across the majority of Western democracies.

“What I fear,” Kevin Rudd said to Lateline’s Tony Jones, “not just in this country but other democracies, is that we slowly start to chip away at the credibility of the democratic process itself.”

Over the past two decades, citizens have been exiting en masse from political parties and participation. Perceptions of malaise and gridlock increase as our political system fails to grapple with the big public policy challenges of our time.

You can’t fight for equality on the basis of one innate characteristic without signing up to the precept that we’re all born equal. One equals one.

“Australia has always had a powerful, if vaguely defined, belief that it was one of the most democratic countries in the world. There is sadness as well as irony in the fact that we were so convinced of our natural superiority in this respect that we needed the Queen’s representative (in 1975) to show us how wrong we were,” distinguished law professor Colin Howard QC wrote.

“In the Victorian branch approx half of the membership is stacked, i.e the memberships are purely nominal and completely controlled by a action or sub-faction. The situation in other states is not much better. The leadership ballot will be conducted by postal vote and the factional bosses will hoover up all the ballots from the stacks and fill them out.

Like everything in the modern Labor party, this exercise in democracy will just be an illusion. The party itself is now little more than an illusion. There is not much there any more.” Tips and Rumours – Crikey 23/09/13

The hallmark of a true democracy is a government that acts in accordance with the will of the people, not a government whose preoccupation is to con its citizenry, whilst looking after its mates.

Part of the problem was that the extremely “narrow catchment of people going into Parliament had eliminated almost everyone who worked for a living”: “This government does not belong to us.” To be elected, one needs tremendous resources, so only the wealthy get to represent us.

Politics is susceptible to perception management. Try the following:

Mock Election Exercise: #

You must choose from the following three candidates. Mark them 1, 2, 3 in order of your preference.

[ ] He’s partially paralysed from Polio. He has hyper-tension, anaemic, and suffers from an array of serious illnesses. He lies if it suits his purpose and consults astrologists on his politics. He is adulterous, chain smokes and drinks too many martinis.

[ ] He’s overweight, already lost three elections. He’s had depression and two heart attacks. He is difficult to work with, smokes cigars non-stop and dozes off every night after downing gallons of champagne, cognac, port, whiskey and two sleeping tablets for good measure.

[ ] He’s a highly decorated war hero, arousing speaker, treats women with respect, loves animals, never smokes, and only has a beer on rare occasions.

Answer at the end.

Assange on NSA

Julian Assange rejected the idea that the NSA/Snowden leaks put the public at threat, saying:

Every time the press embarrasses the security establishment, shows they have been acting unlawfully, against what they have said to Congress or to the media, they trot out this old canard, that some speculative harm sometime in the future might happen, when we’re discussing harm that is happening right now, as a result of these abusive programmes.

The west in general is “getting pretty close in the practical elements” of a totalitarian regime.

It’s a threat to US democracy and to democracy more broadly in the west to have a surveillance apparatus on every single person that would have been the dream of East Germany.

What type of place is western democracy going to be? Is it going to be a place with a collapsing rule of law, with mass surveillance of entire populations? The west is becoming a place where the best and the brightest, who keep the government, hold the government to account, are ending up in asylum or in exile in other countries. We’ve seen that before with dictatorships in Latin America, with the Soviet Union, and it’s time it stops.

Leadership

We no longer practise capital punishment in prisons; we do it in politics.

Leaders are in short supply; they are either led by the nose, the polls, or followers - intent on obliging corporate sponsors, dodgy donors or rabid ideologues.

Much of this makes news; none of it is new. Politics is as old a profession as prostitution, but nowhere near as ethical. Phillip Adams

Harold Evans, The Guardian, 21 October 2013:

The media has a duty to scrutinise the use of power. No editor wants to give aid to murderous enemies, but abuses of power must be revealed.

Protecting the lives of its citizens is a first, sacred duty of government.

Reporting often exposes an ill that government has not recognised or been willing to acknowledge. The state is not omniscient or omnipotent.

Nor is it unknown for government to conceal its own mistakes. I have not been impressed by the blather about “freedom of the press” surrounding the narcissistic [Edward Snowden], but one point he made on 17 October bears examination:

he had to do what he did, he argues, because the National Security Agency hierarchy required him to “report wrongdoing for those most responsible for it”. True or false?

But there is danger, too, when the respect due to “national security” is diluted by accusations that prove unsubstantiated. From the Pentagon Papers on, there is a whole history of authority crying wolf.

MARK TRIFFITT, Former political adviser and University of Melbourne academic.

Better, more strategic leadership is seen as the solution to making what most believe to still be the optimal political system for the 21st century live up to its potential. But let’s keep three things in mind here.

First, Western-style political systems and institutions – derived as they are from 19th-century ideas about how politics should be organised – are no longer optimal, nor even functional in the 21st century. Nor can they be rescued by the panacea of better leadership. This is because, over the last 20 years, these systems have become increasingly isolated from the world around them. As a result, they are increasingly unfit for their purpose for the 21st century.

Second, this isolation is the result of fundamental and irreversible changes to the configurations of political and economic activity that have occurred worldwide from the early 1990s onwards. The changes have particularly focused around the rapid global rollout and take-up of interconnected communications, notably the internet, combined with the rapid spread of liberal market systems on a global scale, otherwise known as globalisation.

The combined effects of globalisation and the massive take-up of virtual interconnectedness have super-sped, super-scaled and made super-complex the dynamics of political and economic activity. In effect, these fundamental changes have profoundly undercut the functionality of Western democracy.

Western democracy, otherwise known as liberal democracy, assumes the world around it will and always move in a comparatively slow, sequential way. This allows political leaders and elected representatives sufficient time to decide on policy and legislate for it in a deliberative fashion.

It also assumes the political party system will always be the best way to aggregate and adequately represent and respond to the political voices and concerns of its citizens. It assumes elected representatives and parliaments are the prime decision-makers and policymakers because they are best able to understand, anticipate and shape the world around them.

But in the context of globalisation and an exponential increase in connectedness, none of these organising principles apply with any consistency or coherency any longer. It has become nearly impossible for elected politicians and parliaments to know or anticipate what is going on in the super-fast and super-complex world that now surrounds them. It is also becoming more and more difficult for parliaments to create timely or coherent public policy or legislative frameworks to anticipate and manage major change, or command consensus around it.

Moreover, it has become increasingly difficult for political parties, organised as they are around 19th-century social and economic cleavages of class, geography and ideology, to relate to, let alone effectively represent, the rapidly changing, fragmenting political voices and endlessly reconfiguring political identities of a social media-driven citizenry.

Our democratic system is profoundly struggling to maintain functionality and legitimacy in the West. A lot of people died as a result of the failure of European democracy in the 1930s. Democracy’s looking pretty ragged again these days, so we should be concerned about history repeating itself.

One of the interesting facets of China’s political system is that beneath the rock of China’s one-party state is a fascinating experiment in political innovation. In essence, the Chinese Communist Party has been quietly instituting a major program of public participation and grassroots decision-making through town meetings, community-based assemblies and what we would recognise in the West as large-scale focus groups.

This may not be democracy as the West knows it. But in a 21st century world that is increasingly bypassing parliaments and political parties, it may point to a future where political systems are judged more on direct public participation than adherence to 19th-century institutions and processes.

Now, when that argument has become the preserve of dissidents within this system, the foreign policy establishment has swung round to a near-gnostic view of intel, with more than a whiff of old Soviet-era logic. Not only are we not allowed to know what they know, we are not allowed to know what we don’t know about what they know. Democracy and freedom must be preserved by their abnegation at a higher level – entrusted to a series of guardians who will ensure its spirit only by traducing it at every opportunity. The contradictions of this have now become obvious to millions of people, which is why the defenders of the system have been reduced to spitting absurdity.

How do we restore faith, confidence and trust in our democratic institutions?

We do need to provide resuscitation by breathing new life into our democracies.

Perhaps the words of Albert Camuscan console us:

“Although there is no reason to hope, that is no reason for despair.”

The After Party #

Founded by a number of Occupy activists, including Occupy.com’s lead investigative reporter Carl Gibson (@uncutcg), the After Party is seeking to breathe fresh life into American democracy itself.

“Last century’s tactics have played themselves out,” Gibson told Crikey . “It’s one thing to point fingers and call people out. That’s important, but we’ve been doing it for a while now, and nobody is taking us seriously. When they ask, ‘So what are you doing about it?’ we never have an answer.”

More importantly, though, the system has become increasingly immune to marches, occupations and other tried but tired methods. “Loud and constant protests led to the US establishing child labour laws, a woman’s right to vote and basic civil rights for black Americans,” Gibson said. “They provided Americans with the eight-hour workday, paid overtime and the weekend. The thing is, though, all of these protests happened in a time when the government was still somewhat sensitive to the needs of their constituents.”

But this, Gibson said, is no longer the case.

“Never before have we had a government so completely subservient to corporate power and so beholden to the rich,” he said. He cited a recent Princeton University study that declared the US an oligarchy, rather than a democracy. “And in a complete absence of democracy,” he said, “our protests have fallen on deaf ears.

“The reason we started the After Party is because we feel that the political realm has been unfairly monopolised by precisely such corporate special interests and big money. We aim to change that over time, starting at the local level.”

“But I think we need revolutionaries and reformers equally,” he said. “The revolutionaries provide the inspirational vision of what we want our ideal society to look like and the reformers achieve the small wins that add up to revolutionary success in the long-term.” Carl Gibson in Crikey.com 23/05/14

HL Mencken, declared, In a presidential election:

*‘all the odds were on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre’.

It was the logic of democracy, he said, that the people would one day get their heart’s desire and put a ‘downright moron’ in the White House.

While understandable, the widespread belief that George W Bush fulfilled Mencken’s prophecy has proved premature.” The Shortlest Daily

John Lee, an authority on foreign affairs, compares the malaise of democracy not to that of the 1930’s. He claims from the 1970’s to the 1990’s more than 30 countries moved to more democratic models, including East Germany and Russia, but that lately a reversal trend of more authoritarian governments is on the rise. He cites as examples, China’s Xi Jingping’s abolition of presidential terms, the Philippine’s Rodrigo Duterte’s 80% approval rating despite his illiberal extrajudicial executions, Turkey’s Erdogan and his increased power, Myanmar’s military junta holding Aung San Suu Kyi, hostage.

The exception appears to be Singapore. One can argue that even in the most democratic countries, anaemic leaders are captives of their parties.

Trump, despite his boorishness, is the exception.

Authoritarians claim they create order and efficiency while democracies create chaos and impede growth. It is important to remember Churchill’s adage:

“democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”.

Lee claims that “prolonged political, economic and social disasters occur in authoritarian systems that lack institutional capacities to self-correct”.

Encouraging signs occur in countries with histories of autocrats – Spain, the Baltic states, Serbia, Croatia…

We, the people, are the guardians and custodians of our freedoms through democratas - the power that is in everyone of us.

Democracy is not threatened by the actions of a few, but the > inactions of the many.

Edward Snowden - The Guardian

Answer to Mock Election: #

If you didn’t choose the first one, we missed out on the most outstanding leader of modern times - Franklin Delano Rooseveldt.

The second one is Sir Winston Churchill.

If you voted for the last one, you have just elected Adolf Hitler.