“Democracy”? What’s That?

It is a good thing that the United States is working day and night to spread the blessings of democracy to countries around the world, since we are losing more of those same blessings with every passing day. In fact, the day is not far off when any number of foreign countries will be more “democratic” than we are; I suspect that many of them are even as we speak. The supreme irony, of course, is that it is the very process of “spreading democracy” that has accelerated the erosion of democracy on the home front, because we do not spread democracy merely by example or persuasion – no, that would be way too inefficient and unreliable. We spread it by armed force! Well, we hope it becomes voluntary sooner or later, but initially the thing to do is coerce people into pretending to be democratic, and pretending to like it. You know, the old thing about building up a habit, and then a virtue, starting with rote imitation and close-order drill? It works in the military, so why not on the international front?

Now, what possible value all of these pseudo-democracies can have to the American people is beyond me. I suspect it’s more like some sort of ego boost for our politicians who consider themselves the inheritors of the principles established -- or so they fancy -- by the Founding Fathers: If it’s good enough for America, it must, by definition, be good enough for the rest of the world, and bollocks on their religions, customs, traditions, and the like. It’s not so much that much of the world is not “ready” for democracy – they simply don’t want it. They have tried it (in theory, at least) and found it wanting. And, I submit, the main “tried and found wanting” instance was simply that they took a look at how democracy “works” _here_ and decided they wanted nothing to do with it. Well, the current election cycle would be enough to turn anybody off. But beyond that, anyone with a grain of sense can see that politics, as practiced in these United States, tends to attract – by and large – neurotic egomaniacs with delusions of grandeur, especially on the national level. These are the kinds of people who make one downright nostalgic for kings – you know, the doddering kind like George III who preferred tinkering with clocks to ruling. Who wouldn’t prefer that sort of ruler to our own mini-Napoleons, who undertake ill-advised military expeditions to places of no discernible value, for their own aggrandizement, AKA “legacy”? It was said of the Romans, “They made a desert and call it peace.” Well, we do better than that – we find a desert and start a war there in order to “democratize” it. Thus, a product – and one of the leading ones – of modern democracy. Then one has to look at the whole “democratic” process – in which – by definition! – the people are presumed to rule. After the protracted agony of the primaries, in which “the people” certainly had nothing whatsoever to do with choosing the field of candidates, we wind up with a choice between two highly delusional men who, in any other profession, would be quickly shunted off to an early retirement, if not a rubber room. But in politics, they’re considered just dandy—“normal” even. So again, what are we advertising to the rest of the world? Then you have to consider what happens when someone comes up with some truly new – revolutionary, say – ideas, and attempts to present them to the public. How is he received? With derision, hostility, blatant discrimination, and legal and regulatory barriers that are all but insurmountable. “Third parties” – you know, those things that the rest of the world calls “political parties” – are treated about as well as lepers with AIDS in this country. Great is the indignation that pours from the media and the mainstream politicians that anyone should have the gall to question the transcendent fairness and inclusiveness of the two-party system. Thus, the receptivity of the American public, and its spoon-feeders – i.e. the media – to new ideas (or “old” ones, like for instance strict interpretation of the Constitution). Does the rest of the world see us honoring democratic principles, or even recognizing them? Not unless they seriously need a new pair of glasses.

So the bottom line is that the American electorate is presented with a “choice” of candidates that represents about 1% of the potential political spectrum, and a huge to-do is made of the whole process by the media – i.e. by the voice of the regime. We have a “right to vote”, unlike those benighted serfs overseas. So we dutifully trudge off to the polls, and that very evening (usually) the winner is announced and presented as “the people’s choice”, which basically means that whether you voted for this clown or not, your duty is to shut the hell up for the next four years, because who are you to argue with “the people”? And in the meantime, this candidate has already completely sold out to various special interests and grievance groups, and the chances of his actually ever doing anything that is consistent with the will of “the people” are indistinguishable from zero. He spends the next four years commanding hapless military ventures and running amok in the economy… and on those rare occasions when challenged, will cite the overwhelming percentage of the voters who chose to put him into office – most of whom have been long-since afflicted with “buyer’s remorse”. Then the golden day dawns when he retires, amidst laurels and tributes from all sides, and much to the relief of all… only to be replaced by one just as bad, if not worse. And this is the system we expect the world to gaze upon in rapture, and to emulate? No wonder we have to force it down their throats!

And meanwhile, on the home front, the price of “spreading democracy” grows higher by the day. Because our gentle persuasion of other nations, peoples, and cultures invariably takes the form of military (overt or otherwise) operations, and because said operations are notoriously expensive, the government is forced to delve ever deeper into our pocketbooks – and personal affairs – in order to finance these ventures. And as it seeks for dollars wherever they may be found, the level of intrusion into commercial life deepens as well, as does the level of regulation, paperwork, “reporting”, accounting, and so on. We are, in effect, charged with financing a crusade, and no commercial or personal transaction is too trivial to qualify for a “cut” in the interests of the cause. Then add to this the fragile – if existent at all – structure of language and propaganda that constitutes a rationale for these efforts. It has to be financed through the media, for one thing. And the suppression of dissenting voices has to be accomplished as well. And in these times, there is a new enemy, namely the Internet. Since it is to difficult to censor, the propaganda machine in other media has to be set into high gear and maintained that way in perpetuity – and that is a very expensive process. For every blogger out there (and I blush to consider that I might qualify as one of them) someone in the MSM has to be charged with their total contradiction, if not outright defamation.

One finds, historically, that the more ill-advised the foreign venture, the more effort must be expended to suppress internal, i.e. domestic, dissent. Fight a “good” war, and only a few nut cases will protest, and they are easily dealt with (can you say “Fort Leavenworth”, class?). Fight a “bad” war – e.g., Vietnam or Iraq – and the challenge is much more daunting, therefore the mechanisms of suppression and propaganda have to be bolstered and continually fed with the resources of those they are designed to convince. Thus do we pay for our own chains and shackles. And this is just on the domestic side. Now we have the continual threat of “terrorism” as an excuse to erode civil liberties, wherever and whenever it is deemed appropriate. So we become not only a fortress nation, politically isolated from the rest of the world by our own paranoia and fanaticism, but we suffer from “internal paranoia” as well, whereby any citizen, regardless of his record of impeccable behavior, could, at any time, turn coat and align himself with the terror masters of the Hindu Kush. Compared to the alleged paranoia of the “communist witch hunts” of the 1950s – which turned out to be all-too-justified – this is pure lunacy. And yet it is seeping more and more into domestic policy and into the lives of ordinary citizens.

And make no mistake – the rest of the world sees, and notes well, all of this. We are in a position at present similar to that of the Soviet Union in the Stalinist era – hyper-aggressive, hyper-paranoid, and really scary as far as the rest of the world is concerned. When “_the_ superpower” seems out of control and run by lunatics, other nations have reason to quake in fear. Even Israel is starting to wonder whether we aren’t carrying their cause a bit too far; they are more willing to negotiate with their enemies than we are! (Of course, they have to actually live in the Near East, whereas we don’t. We’re just expected to pay a visit now and then… with a few hundred thousand troops, of course.) This is all, IMHO, a sign of deep pathology on our part. But in the meantime, we are trumpeting our belief in democracy worldwide, and that it’s not only good for us – it’s good for everyone, and heaven help you if you disagree. You might have to be re-educated, at the point of a gun! We have become the “crazy uncle in the attic” to the rest of the world, except the crazy uncle still has a lot of money and he has a lot of guns. Who, then, will bell the cat? And how, and when? Time will tell.