Home » Posts tagged 'democracy' (Page 4)

Tag Archives: democracy

The curmudgeon’s retort

Posted on by | 8 Comments

I quit Facebook a couple of years ago; I decided I just wasn’t cut out for it.  I suffer from the inability to let egregious errors slide, especially when the topic is an important one.  It’s not that I think I’m always right; I’m open to correction with a good argument.  Unfortunately, that’s not a response I got very often.  Most of the time, the responses were couched in personal terms: I was a troll, I was being too picky, or, in one case, I was making a ridiculous fool of myself for disagreeing.

Maybe they’re right.  I’ve had similar reactions on Twitter, although I’ve learned to just withdraw at the first sign of it.  What I find oddly disturbing, though, is how often a simple disagreement is characterized as a lack of respect.  Have we really come to the point where we think it’s disrespectful to openly disagree?

Social media seem to be seen as places where anyone gets to express their opinion, no matter how misinformed, or, indeed, insulting, without the fear of being exposed to contradiction.  If I don’t think something you’ve posted is correct, fine; I get to post my own opinion, but not in response to yours.  As a result, we, as a people, can happily continue shouting at each other without engaging in any meaningful discussion.

Nothing wrong with this, where mere opinion is concerned, I suppose, but the line between opinion and verifiable fact has all but disappeared in our discourse.  And that’s very dangerous in a democracy, because it leaves us open to all kinds of manipulation.  Not the least of which is the illusion that the majority of the nation feels exactly as we do on all the issues of importance, because we never allow ourselves to hear anything different.  As a result, when an election goes astray from what we perceive as the inevitable result, we’re convinced it’s because of corruption, or worse, a conspiracy.  And who’s to tell us otherwise?

If there’s a single word to describe this trend it’s this: childish. It goes along with our fascination  with the simple black/white dichotomies of the comic-book movies we’re inundated with, and “extreme” sports, also straight out of the comics.  Are we doomed to continue this prolonged adolescence forever?

The myth of The People

Posted on by | 11 Comments

So much of politics is sheer romanticism.  With the exception of the cadre of professional cynics who actually run things, we all willingly blind ourselves to reality.  Of the true, died-in-the-wool ideologues, this is so obvious as to merit barely a mention, but it’s no less true of the vast majority of the rest of us as well.  Those on the right imagine themselves as hard-bitten realists. on the left as compassionate champions of the disadvantaged.  The vast “middle,” which is not really between any of the alternatives, but simply uncommitted to either of the major parties, sees itself as a last bastion of reasoned judgment, too smart to buy into the programs of the ideologues.  Never mind that any consistency with regard to policy has long been abandoned by all concerned.

What is fascinating is that all sides regard themselves as typical of The People, and claim to speak for them, or at least on their behalf.  This belief is resistant to any attempt at refutation, even scientifically conducted polls which clearly demonstrate otherwise.  The only time attention is paid to a poll is when it corroborates the affiliation of a party with The People on some particular issue.  Otherwise, it’s “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” to quote a meme attributed to virtually any famous person sufficiently dead to forestall denial.  It’s really a symptom of our hog-wild, post-modern ultrarelativism, on which I have droned sufficiently elsewhere, I believe.

In this case, however, that relativism is grafted onto some time honored political tropes, ready made for bandying about when necessary to muddle things up.  It has long been noted that when someone dies, what the dear departed would have wanted coincides marvelously with what the survivors want.  Frequently, people claim that they are not really fighting over who gets the Rolex, but over what Dad would have wanted.  So, too, in politics, it’s never about whose agenda gets advanced, but what The People want.  And so we get the spectacle of Ted Cruz, in the face of poll after poll showing the majority disapproved of the government shutdown, swearing he was in it to do The Will of The People.

The left doesn’t get a pass on this account either.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard socialists go on and on about The People’s this or The People’s that, oblivious to the fact that most Americans would disagree.  Props to Lenin, for openly admitting to his 3% constituency.

This is not to pass judgment on any particular program or policy; just the pretense about representing people you don’t.

The People, capitalized, almost never coincides with the people, lower case.

Why not to call a pox on both houses

Posted on by | 6 Comments

It’s quiz time again, boys and girls!

Consider this:  You have a tree in your yard.  It’s fine and healthy, but a neighbor keeps getting drunk and running into it with his car.  Soon, you begin to worry that it might be causing lasting damage.  Do you

a)  Move your tree,
b) If he hits it again, move it again,
c) Throw up your hands, denouncing the sorry state of drivers, or
d) Try to get your neighbor off the road until he stops drinking.

It may or may not be true that all politicians are corrupt, but this observation does nothing to improve the situation we find ourselves in.  I read a blog post the other day that maintained that the real problem was that public servants should be selfless, and they’re not.  This brought to mind two observations: when I hear people criticize someone for being selfish, what they usually mean is they’re not paying enough attention to their needs; the other thing is that hardly anyone, let alone politicians, is selfless to an ideal degree.  Our elected representatives are going to have their own interests at heart; after all, don’t you?  The problem is how to structure things so that doesn’t conflict with the public interest.  Never mind that we don’t all agree with what that is.  After all, those 40 or so Tea Party congressmen were voted into office, and, by all accounts, their constituents tend to agree with their actions.

In any case, the irony is that these people are apparently acting out of principle — that is to say, out of a feeling that they are doing what the country desperately needs.  You can always reason with cynics, by convincing them what they’re doing is not in their best interests.  If someone is acting out of principle, however, forget it.

If you say the whole government is corrupt and irredeemable, you are really falling in line with the Tea Party.  If that’s what you want, say so.  If not, don’t muddy the waters and let the real perpetrators get away under the cover of cynicism.

Rude awakening?

Posted on by | 5 Comments

The Egyptian army cracks down on the Muslim Brotherhood; the majority of the population approves.  Greece arrests members of the fascist Golden Dawn party, including members of parliament; their popularity crumbles.  Not much to go on, if you’re looking for a trend, but it’s enough to ask the question, are we getting tired of extremism?

Up til now, to be extreme has been the height of fashion.  Even the dullest events and pastimes have jumped on the extreme bandwagon.  Extreme knitting would not have raised an eyebrow.  No limits, all out, leave it on the field.

It’s my suspicion that all this tolerance, and even preference, for extremism is a by-product of the unprecedented prosperity of the two decades prior to the 2008 meltdown.  When things are going well, why impose limits?  Wasn’t “no limits” the mantra of the feel-good 90s?  It was fully entrenched by the time people were engulfed in recession; it must have seemed the right approach to bring the crisis to a close.  There was a lingering suspicion that the problems were caused by timidity, in any case, and all that was required was more bullishness.  It’s a commonplace that the first reaction to an ideological crisis is retrenchment.  We’re having problems?  We haven’t been true enough to our principles.  The Peasants are rebelling, reaffirm the authority of the aristocracy.  Religious fanatics commit mass murder, hurry off to church.  We see it time and again down through history.

Seen in this light, our devotion to the extreme looks less like a devil-may-care embrace of uncertainty, and more like a conservative retrenchment.

But in all such cases, there comes the creeping realization that not only are things not improving under this program, they are actually getting worse.  Retrenchment collapses under its own burdensome weight.

If what we are seeing abroad is the first faint glimmering of this collapse, we can only hope it reaches our shores before the lunatics destroy our government beyond redemption

Think

Posted on by | 5 Comments

The tea party is al Qaeda, and we’re all Muslims.