Doomsday Democracy

What is a Democracy?

The word “democracy” derives from the Greek “demos” (the people) and “kratia” (rule).  Even though WE honor the expression “the people,” the Greeks meant “the common people” or a “mob.”  Our Founding Fathers meant “the people” to rule, but they meant people like themselves, aristocrats in today’s vernacular.  When WE ask who are “the people” –  who should rule – we mean ALL of us (over 18 years of age).

The Greek philosopher, Plato, was not a fan of democracy as the Athenian democracy had sentenced his mentor, Socrates, to death.  But those who made up the "democracy" of Plato’s day were aristocrats of their time, not the common people.  Plato favored a “philosopher king,” an extraordinarily knowledgeable man who would never – from his own ambition – seek to rule others.  We Americans, on the other hand, elevate ONLY those who would seek to rule others!  Plato would not have approved.

The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, whose mentor was Plato himself, was ambivalent about democracy.  There were three kinds of rule: Monarchy, rule by one; Aristocracy, rule by a few; and Polity, rule by the many.  Despotism, Oligarchy and Democracy were corruptions of each of these types.  The distinction between the good Polity and the corrupted Democracy was the makeup of “the people.”  A Polity’s citizens were what we would today call upper middle-class and college-educated, while the citizens of a Democracy were lower middle-class and relatively under-educated.  Aristotle believed that a Polity was the best form of government, but that Democracy was the worst!  Two sides of the same coin.  We could argue endlessly which we are, but I think we have elements of both; and we are headed on a downward path.

Plato also said the there is a natural progressive degeneration from aristocracy (what he called rule by his Philosopher King) to timocracy to oligarchy to democracy and, finally, to tyranny.  Some would argue that we are on the cusp between democracy and tyranny.  We do have a would-be tyrant in waiting, and a significant number of citizens who seem to crave tyranny as long as they get to choose the tyrant.

Jumping ahead a bit, Winston Churchill is reported to have quipped “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”  But, of course, he meant a working democracy, not a plutocracy disguised as a democracy.  He also assumed a degree of civic engagement in the electorate.

Our Broken Democracy

Our democracy – our American democracy – is a sham as “the people” do not rule, Big Money rules (plutocracy).  We do, however, have universal suffrage (except where it is being chipped away by the legislatures of way too many states), so we think the people rule.  They do not.

One thing that everyone seems to agree on is that our government is not working.  And everyone has a solution that will fix everything.  Some fix issues without dealing with our plutocracy.  Here are some of those fixes or issues:

• Term Limits
• Gerrymandering
• Ranked Choice Voting
• Campaign Finance Reform // Public Financing of Elections // repeal Citizens United
• Voter Suppression
• Widespread Voter Fraud
• Paper Ballots
• Automatic Voter Registration // mandatory voting
• Repeal of the Electoral College
• Civic Literacy

Dealing with our plutocracy – creating a real democracy where We the People truly rule – will require a Constitutional amendment (#28 or #29) that builds an impenetrable wall of separation between government and Big Money, and that declares that money is NOT protected speech under the First Amendment.

Facts & Experts

But winning a real democracy will not solve tomorrow’s problems because We the People may not be up to it.   I am here returning to the discussion about a Polity of educated folks vs. a democracy of less-educated folks.  But perhaps I am NOT talking about education at all; but rather an attitude toward facts, evidence, and experts in a field.

I cannot measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon or the Sun.  But EVERY single book on astronomy tells me the same thing: the Moon is about 240,000 miles from the Earth and the Sun is about 93,000,000 miles from the Earth.  I believe the experts in their field because “what else should I believe?”  The alternative to believing “experts” is chaos: you just decide what you want to believe and that is the end of it.  I can’t prove Darwin’s Theory of Evolution but there may not be a single biologist in the world who does not agree with its fundamentals.  Not wanting to be a cousin to chimpanzees is not a very good argument against it being so.  I can’t prove Global Warming, but those who study it are 98+% in favor of its principles.  Fifty governors, and fifty secretaries of state certified Joe Biden’s election, as did over sixty judges (some of whom Trump appointees) and the Supreme Court.   You may legally not believe any of these assertions; you have a right to be ignorant, you have a right to be foolish – or stupid – and even believe the “Big Lie.”  But you have NO right to be RIGHT!  Facts are facts.  Those who deny facts live in a fantasy world.

But many of these matters of FACT are under political attack.  And we will never survive the stupidity of a democracy where too many voting citizens deny facts, evidence, and the near unanimous claims of experts in their fields.

Doomsday Democracy

Global Warming/Climate Change is the “existential crisis” of our time.  It is a fact; and while "climate" is a long-term construct, warming is happening every day across the world.  But, as long as enough Congressmen, Senators, or a President (whom you elected) deny this fact, nothing will be done to counter it.  The end of Global Warming is not unwanted refugees spilling across the borders into your country, the end of Global Warming is species extinction.  How do you boil a frog?  Slowly.  Too many Americans are frogs who refuse to believe that the water is coming to a boil.

Global Warming is a long-term crisis.  But most people spend little time on long-term problems.  People whose economic status is survival – putting food on the table, paying the rent, paying for gas for the family automobile – can be forgiven for not having the time to become educated in so many scientific specialties, for not understanding Darwinian Evolution or Global Warming.  But turning ignorance into a vote – and tens of millions of votes at that – is a Death Wish for all of us.  "In a democracy, the people get the government that they deserve."

Our country is made up of tens of millions of good and noble citizens who do not accept the scientific “facts” that I spoke of above.  They need to consider that their lack of formal education does not put them in a position to argue with experts in their fields.  They need to be humble in the face of their fellow men and women who have made a life’s work of studying things that most of us don’t care a lot about.

Believe what you will, but please don’t empower politicians who trade on your ignorance!  Our democracy depends on you!  Doomsday for Democracy?  Doomsday for humanity?  It is in your hands.