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Democracy: Rhetoric & Reality

The federal bureaucrats, think tank leaders, and congressional staff members they surveyed, Ginsberg said in an interview with VICE News, “have no idea what Americans think and they don’t care. They think Americans are stupid and should do what they are told.”
~ Alex Thompson

The US political system is functioning as designed. From early on, the Federalists envisioned a government controlled and operated by a paternalistic ruling elite of rich white men — some combination of plutocrats, technocrats, bureaucrats, and disinterested aristocracy.

The ‘People’ was intended to be a meaningless abstraction to placate the dirty masses. When the general population actually tried to assert their authority, they were violently put down. Over time, the ruling elite found less violent ways to keep the public in line, such as the increasing spectacle of elections.

If we are to take democracy seriously, we need to understand the kind of system we have. Then we should consider the alternatives.

The following includes two passages from a book. Below that are numerous links to articles. I wanted to share some views on democracy, elections, sortition, representation, oligarchy, technocracy, etc.

In addition to participating in the debates occurring in the Assembly (the ekklesia), the Athenian citizen could be called upon to serve as a juror in one of the many legal actions involving private or public suits, to serve in an administrative capacity as magistrate overseeing some government function (such as water or grain supply, building projects, or trade), or to serve on the Council (the boule). The boule was a body of five hundred members and was responsible for drafting preparatory legislation for consideration by the Assembly, overseeing the meetings of the Assembly, and in certain cases executing legislation as directed by the Assembly.

The members of the boule were selected by a lottery held each year among male citizens over thirty years of age. Fifty men would be chosen from each of the ten Athenian tribes, with service limited to twice in a lifetime. There were ten months in the Athenian calendar, and one of the ten tribes was in ascendancy each month. The fifty citizen councilors (prytanies) of the dominant tribe each month served in an executive function over the boule and the ekklesia. From that group of fifty, one individual (the epistates) would be selected each day to preside over the boule and, if it met in session that day, the ekklesia.

The epistates held the keys to the treasury and the seal to the city, and he welcomed foreign ambassadors. It has been calculated that one-quarter of all citizens must at one time in their lives have held the post, which could be held only once in a lifetime. Meetings of the boule might occur on as many as 260 days in the course of a year.

The third element of the Athenian democracy was the system of jury courts known as the dikasteria. Jurors were selected by lot from an annual pool of 6,000 citizens (600 from each of the ten tribes) over the age of thirty. There were both private suits and public suits. For private suits the minimum jury size was 201; it was increased to 401 if a sum of more than 1,000 drachmas was at issue. For public suits there was a jury of 501. On occasion a jury of 1,001 or 1,501 would be selected. Rarely, the entire pool of 6,000 would be put on a case. No Athenian juror was ever subjected to compulsory empanelment, voir dire, or sequestration, nor was any magistrate empowered to decide what evidence the jury could or could not be allowed to see.

Jurors could not be penalized for their vote— unless it could be shown that they had accepted bribes. But the practice of selecting juries randomly on the morning of the trial and the sheer size of the juries served to limit the effectiveness of bribery. The Athenian court system did not operate according to precedent. No jury was bound by the decisions of previous juries in previous cases. This is a striking difference between Athenian law and more familiar systems such as Roman law or English common law. Such a system of justice was consistent with the Athenian opposition to elitism and the oppressive effects of received wisdom in matters of justice. Each citizen used his own common sense to make judgments based on personal belief and prevailing mores.

Some crimes had penalties predetermined by law, but in most cases the choice was left up to the jury.

Kindle Locations 2960-3046

Choosing by lot is the most democratic procedure of all. It establishes political equality by allowing anyone to govern, based on a chance event. There is no opportunity to buy the election or manipulate votes. However, the pool of candidates itself can be open-ended, as it was in Athens, or, for the most part, confined to the upper elements of society, as it tended to be in Florence. The same applies to elections. The pool of candidates can be open to anyone or it can be restricted by membership in a particular party, by property qualification, or by wealth. Voting itself can be restricted— by race, sex, social status, wealth, and so on— or suffrage can be universal. But, no matter, because the means of selecting the governors is independent of the form of government. A society can elect an aristocracy or an oligarchy or even a monarch.

At the height of his career, Napoleon Bonaparte was probably the most powerful person in Western Europe. He enjoyed great popularity at home, if not elsewhere. In 1804, he had himself crowned emperor. He held a plebiscite to confirm his authority and received the enthusiastic support he was seeking. In other words, Napoleon held an election to determine if he would be supreme ruler. Let us imagine that there was universal suffrage and that the election was scrupulously fair. Let us also imagine, just for the sake of argument, that the choice was unanimous, that not a single vote was cast to deny Napoleon the title of emperor. Thus we have a completely democratic, honest election with a unanimous outcome. What kind of government do we have the day after this democratic election? Clearly, an autocracy.

Charles V— who made his home in Spain— presided over an empire that was ten times the size of the Roman Empire. He ruled over the Burgundian Netherlands. He was King of Naples and Sicily, Archduke of Austria, King of the Romans (or German King), and Holy Roman Emperor. It was his empire upon which “the sun never set.” “Spain” was not the Spain of today, but many separate “Spains,” something like the city-states of northern Italy. Charles needed to be declared King in Navarre, Valencia, Aragon, Castile, and Catalonia. In 1516, at the age of sixteen, he was elected King of Aragon, a “republic” with an elective king. The assembly gave notice that “we who are as good as you, make you, who are no better than we, our king. And we will bear true allegiance if you observe our laws and customs; if not, not” (Barzun, 93). Despite these noble sentiments and stipulations, the day after the election the people of Aragon lived under a monarchy.

Thus, there is no causal relation whatsoever between the means of selecting one’s governors and the form of government that results from the selection process. In fact, for obvious reasons, any time you have an election as a means of selecting the governor( s), you automatically will have an oligarchy/ aristocracy or an autocracy/ monarchy. Why? Because the many select the few or the one. Thus, voting in which elections are fully democratic and fair is in fact anti-democratic. One cannot have voting and have a democracy at the same time.[ 140] Remember, it’s a numbers game. The many choose the few. It is the few who govern, even if we choose them at election time.

“But,” you may say, “we choose them. They are beholden to us.” Neither one of these propositions is necessarily true. In his book The Ruling Class, Gaetano Mosca [141] observes:

The fact that a people participates in electoral assemblies does not mean that it directs the government or that the class that is governed chooses its governors.[ 142] It means merely that when the electoral function operates under favorable social conditions it is a tool by which certain political forces are enabled to control and limit the activity of other political forces. (Mosca, 98).

In other words, it seems as if we choose and control, but we don’t.

As Mosca points out, the deck is always stacked. “When we say that the voters ‘choose’ their representative, we are using a language that is very inexact. The truth is that the representative has himself elected by the voters … that his friends have him elected” (italics in the original). We end up voting for those who are preselected by virtue of their “moral, intellectual and material means to force their will upon others, take the lead over the others and command them” (ibid., 154) (italics in the original).

Thus, in practice, in popular elections, freedom of choice, “though complete theoretically, necessarily becomes null, not to say ludicrous.” The voter, for his vote to have meaning, ends up having to choose from among a very small number of contenders, the two or three who have a chance of succeeding, “and the only ones who have any chance of succeeding are those whose candidacies are championed by groups, by committees, by organized minorities” (Mosca, ibid.) (italics in the original).[ 143]

The relative handful who are selected to speak for the citizenry are rarely, if ever, a random selection. They are rarely, if ever, demographically representative of the population at large. And they are rarely, if ever, open to the wishes of their constituency. Instead, those selected to represent speak not for their constituency but for the organized minorities who put them in power, minorities with certain values in common, “based on considerations of property and taxation, on common material interests, on ties of family, class, religion, sect or political party”( ibid., 155). Thus, the preselected minority speaks for an even narrower minority who sponsored their candidacy based on a specific set of goals at odds with the needs and wishes of the vast majority. Mosca was writing in the 1930s. What would he say if he knew that it now takes millions of dollars to get elected to the House of Representatives, tens of millions to be elected senator or governor, and close to a billion to be elected president? He would probably say, “I told you so.”

“But,” you may argue, “we in the United States have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that protects our civil liberties.” Yes, true. However, the Constitution simply guarantees that we live under an oligarchy,[ 144] one that seems to be drifting toward monarchy. As for the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, they are critical to our civic democracy (C.D. +)— our rights to self-expression and freedom of movement— but, as important as they are, they do not determine the form of political government we live under.

“Yes, but,” you may ask, “didn’t Madison say that the people had the last word, that they were sovereign?” Yes, he did say that. On several occasions he said that power is derived from the people (F.P., No. 37, 227; No. 39, 241; No. 49, 314). He also said that the “ultimate authority … resides in the people alone” (ibid., No. 46, 294), that the people are “the only legitimate fountain of power”( ibid., No. 49, 313), and that they are “the fountain of authority” (ibid., No. 51, 321). These are examples of what I call rhetorical democracy (R.D. +, P.D.–)— democracy of words, not deeds, the most frequently encountered kind of democracy in a world dominated by those who oppose true popular government.[ 145]

Once we clear away the mist of myth and rhetoric, we discover that the American government was established by men who needed to placate the people while setting themselves up as arbiters of the new nation’s destiny. In a 1991 book entitled The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Early America, 1630– 1789, Joshua Miller speaks of “the ghostly body politic” and declares that “despite the explicit anti-democratic statements of the Federalists, Americans persist in describing the government they designed as a democracy” (Miller, 105). This confusion, he maintains, was deliberately created by the Federalists, who used “pseudodemocratic rhetoric” (ibid., 106) to make it appear as if “popular sovereignty” was the same thing as “popular government.” “The Federalists ascribed all power to a mythical entity that could never meet, never deliberate, never take action. The body politic became a ghost” (ibid., 113). By ascribing all power to “the people”— an empty abstraction— and transferring that power to a strong central government, the Federalists were able to assume power for themselves while appearing to do just the opposite. “Popular sovereignty would give the new government the support of the people and, at the same time, insulate the national government from the actual activity of the people”( ibid., 121).

Democracy is a form of government in which political power is equally distributed among the citizen population. The people are sovereign not just in principle, but in fact. Aristotle declares, “Private rights do not make a citizen. He is ordinarily one who possesses political power” (McKeon, 550). In other words, our civic rights (C.D. +) do not make us citizens. Our direct participation in government (P.D. +) makes us citizens. “A citizen is one who shares in governing and being governed,” according to Aristotle (ibid., 604). “What, then, is democracy?” asks Max Weber. “In itself it means simply that no formal inequality of political rights exists between the classes of the population” (Weber, 275). In a democracy, political equality prevails.

I believe that for those of us living in the Western “democracies” the concept of political equality, as opposed to social equality, has simply disappeared from our lexicon, from our thoughts, from our utterances, from our struggles. We want a better deal for ourselves and our neighbors. Perhaps we even want social justice. But it never occurs to us that without political equality, our wishes cannot be fulfilled.

This was not always true. Once independence had been declared and fought for in the United States, just about everyone was aware of the issue of power and its distribution. Political equality represented a conscious choice for many. This was the case, as well, in the early Italian city-states, to a degree in the Roman Republic, and, of course, in ancient Athens.

Currently, as governments abandon even the pretense of serving the common good, there is a resurgent interest in political equality as a means to gaining some degree of control over the affairs of state. In the process of learning to govern we begin to unfold as individuals in ways that we didn’t know that were possible. We begin to understand that government shapes us just as we shape it.

I like to keep it context that a large part of the population during and since the American Revolution have fought for democracy and against plutocracy. They did win some battles that shouldn’t be dismissed. If not for them, we’d be living in a country that is a thousand times more authoritarian.

Still, it’s small comfort to be reminded that it could have been much worse, especially when one considers it still yet might get much worse. More people are beginning to, as you say, wake up to realize the cruel reality… maybe because they are realizing it keeps getting worse with no end in sight.

The real question I think is when cynicism will lead to serious action. I find it amusing that Clinton fans want to “shame” Bernie supporters into voting for Clinton. Not real action, just perpetuating the status quo.

I’ve been wondering about that. Seeing how strongly attached so many are to the status quo is beyond disheartening.

I would have thought more people would have hit a breaking point by now and seen the failure of the system, a failure by design and with a purpose that has nothing to do with democracy, which is to say it really isn’t a failure. One can easily argue that the system is working perfectly fine, probably succeeding, when seen for what it is.

This is similar to thinking that recent wars have been failures based on the assumption that the only reason a war is fought is to win in the traditional sense, but it appears that maintaining power globally has little to do with winning wars. All that is required is to ensure others don’t win by overthrowing governments and destabilizing regions.

I think that I understand now how authoritarian regimes must have gained power historically. Many people just go with the flow, even though the flow is screwing them over. The sad part about this is that most Clinton supporters are not 1%ers (which would make some sense that they support her).

The other problem is that the economic problems were caused by the corporate worldview that Clinton espouses. They betrayed the New Deal and the Left for campaign money. Well, I guess it is not quite a betrayal as much as it is they never cared about the left to begin with – they outright lied about what they would do. The problem is that political cynicism is caused by economic despair, which the Clinton’s have helped worsen.

What is distressing is that most people don’t seem to realize and they buy the “she’s not Trump line”. As it stands, there is a high probability that she can win on this propaganda. Then the cynicism that caused her rise will worsen when she inevitably betrays her base and disappoints.

The simple of it is this. Lesser evil thinking leads to greater evil. People keep choosing lesser evil until there is nothing but evil left. Too many mistakenly think of political evil in simplistic terms. It never appears as evil.

Even Hitler surely seemed like a breath of fresh air to the German people of the time. Facing so many economic and political problems, Hitler probably was considered by many to be the lesser evil, even if they didn’t entirely believe his claims toward the greater good. But it was a step by step process of lesser evil thinking that led to that point. Someone like Hitler doesn’t come out of nowhere.

In fact, Hitler did do much good initially. He turned the economy around. And he rebuilt infrastructure. He made the German people feel proud again, that they weren’t merely losers of WWI, but also a great nation.

Likewise, the US has seen immense economic growth these past decades. Amazing infrastructure has been built such as the interstate highway system, modeled on Germany, and the internet. Great technological advances have been made by US companies. It’s just that this has come at great cost to those on the bottom of society. And now the middle class is realizing too late that the ruling elite consider the middle class to be part of the lower classes.

People support lesser evil because they think the evil will only effect other people, not them. “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” Humans are predictable and so easily manipulable by the ruling elite.

Some will. But I think it’s predictable. Most of the Bernie supporters who weren’t Democrats before won’t vote for Clinton just because of fear of Trump. But most of the Bernie supporters who were Democrats before will vote for Clinton because she is a Democrat and not a Republican. Even though there are some former partisans who have turned away from the Democratic Party, I doubt they are large enough in number to make a difference by themselves, partly because there are also former partisans who have turned away from the Republican Party, thus canceling each other out.

People won’t care until they’re forced to care. My closest friend has heard me say everything that is wrong with Clinton. He isn’t a partisan Democrat and isn’t particularly political. But his fear of Trump has led him to early vote for Clinton. Fear trumps all else. What people don’t understand is that they should be fearing Clinton. People just don’t get how dangerous she is because of what she represents.

As a union member, I’m fully aware of the problems of unions and their relationship to the Democratic Party. They are both taken granted for and taken advantage of. Most of the people in my union were for Sanders, but the union leadership early on gave their support to Clinton. Not even the union ambassadors were asked their opinion. And there was no discussion. It was simply declared.

The other thing I think that has happened is that Second Generation Feminism as a movement has discredited itself.

When they chose Clinton over Bernie, I think that said everything we need to know about what they stand for. Their patronizing, “know it all” tone made it a lot worse.

I think that this will have consequences for decades to come. If Clinton wins and she gets in power, then betrays her base, everything that she stood for will be discredited. Worse, it may convince many future voters than women may be worse than men or at least no better. That’s the real crisis that many Clinton advocates don’t realize.

They could be discrediting many things for a long time — the Democratic Party, liberalism, and the political left. Even if all of this isn’t entirely discredited, there could be a severe crippling that might last a generation. It might turn even larger numbers of Americans toward radical and reactionary politics.

It’s odd watching such people play their games of manipulation and control. I can’t comprehend how they can think that those tactics won’t come back to harm them later on. Do they really only care for temporary gain no matter the long term cost? There is something severely messed up about our society. I see self-destructive behavior going on everywhere, almost as if our society is attempting to commit suicide.

It wouldn’t surprise me, if something like that happens. Nothing good will come out of a Clinton presidency. It’s just an issue of how bad it will be, how much damage will be done and if it any of it could ever be undone. A Clinton president would accomplish way more than a Trump president, which is what worries me. She would get things done and we will suffer for it.

I heard about that incident. But that is the first time I saw the specific details about it.

That is some damning material. It is dispiriting that no matter how damning it gets nothing seems to change. There is no limit to what can be denied, dismissed, spun, and rationalized.

The politicians and parties don’t want to talk about it, of course. Yet the MSM and partisans also have their heads up their collective ass. It’s a conspiracy of not just corruption but idiocy. Few people want to know and, even among those who know, even fewer want to acknowledge any of it.

I keep thinking that I can’t get any more cynical. I fear that I haven’t yet seen the depths of how cynical I might become before it is all over with.

The scary part is that I think there’s a serious chance that Trump may be the lesser evil. The other thing is that a Trump victory might galvanize the left and discredit the Clintons, along with the Establishment.

I’ve been off and on considering that possibility. It very well could be that Trump would be the lesser evil.

The thing is that Clinton, as far as I know, is the most corrupt presidential candidate that has run successfully in a major party and that has been widely known and proven for being corrupt in the campaign season before the election. This is highly unusual because there has never been a candidate that had so much info leaked about them and so we’ve never before known so much about a candidate.

I wouldn’t argue that Clinton is the most corrupt politician ever to have existed, but most of the time we simply don’t know about the corruption. This creates a dilemma for voters. Once the corruption is made known, voters can’t pretend they don’t know and so voting for such a candidate would make them complicit in that corruption. Ignorance is not a reasonable defense this election.

“A people that elect corrupt politicians… are not victims… but accomplices.”
~ George Orwell

A lot of people on the Progressive forums are debating between voting for Trump and Stein.

It is a tragedy that it has come down to this. Thinking strategically, some are saying that a Trump presidency might rally the left in 2020. A Clinton presidency would almost certainly suppress the left.

I’m feeling in a forgiving mood as we’ve come closer to the election. I don’t see that there is a rational choice to be made because there is no rational way to analyze the choices. Basically, there is no good choice that will be guaranteed to lead to good results. It isn’t even clear which choice would lead to the worst results. We are flying blind.

Anyway, it’s not as if this national political system has ever represented us. No matter which candidates and which party gains power, nothing fundamentally changes and everything continually gets worse. Studies show that politicians don’t give a shit about what the voting public thinks and most of the time those politicians are simply clueless about public opinion, even among their own constituents.

It’s a banana republic, except maybe at the most local level. If you feel a need to participate in democracy, then be concerned about the politics in your city or county. But beyond that, the public is powerless until they decide to start a revolution.

The point is that our votes for the presidency are not going to make a difference and it is useless taking responsibility for what is outside of our control. If the United States is to decline or turn even more authoritarian, there is little individuals can do about it unless they are willing to commit to direct action that likely will get them killed or land them in prison.

Presidential campaigns and elections are spectacles meant to distract us. They keep us from taking real actions that would make a difference.

Over at many of the Democratic sites a fight has broken out. Apparently Jill Stein’s margin was big enough to get Clinton a couple of states. But the biggest hatred is coming towards us Bernie supporters (Even though I’m a Canadian lol – although I did use to live in Ohio and let me tell you, that area is devastated economically).

The Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. They sabotaged Bernie. They just don’t have the honesty to admit it.

I’m honestly not worried about any of it… or rather I’m indifferent. I’ve been outraged so long that I don’t have the energy for any further outrage. The country has been getting worse for such a long time, longer than I’ve been alive. None of this should be shocking, for anyone who has been paying attention.

I’ve been saying that someone like Trump is an inevitable result of politics as usual. If we wanted to prevent Trump from becoming president, we would have had to be willing to prevent corrupt politicians like the Clintons from gaining power. They are two sides of the same coin.

Here is what I just posted to Facebook, the first social media post I’ve made since September:

This is my prescient commentary from two years ago on this day. Reading it now, my words sound like a prediction.

Democrats had many opportunities to deal with their own problems and corruption, but chose not to do so. They ignored and dismissed the righteous outrage of those being harmed. Now they will suffer the consequences of being thrown out of power.

Partisan Democrats and mainstream liberals have been banished to the wilderness. Let’s hope they do some serious soul searching.

That was in response to this comment from two years ago:

We do live in interesting times right now. No doubt about it.

When you look at polls, the vast majority of Americans have a negative opinion of most of big government and most big biz corporations. Yet our entire society is ruled by both, and the collusion between both keeps growing.

At some point, the negative opinions of the American people is going to hit a critical mass and turn into an outrage that can’t be suppressed or ignored. The longer those in power attempt to suppress and ignore it, the worse the outrage will get.

Democrats have been rebuked. And Clinton has been publicly shamed. That is what they deserve. Plus, the Clinton political dynasty needed to be stopped. Political dynasties are dangerous and they all need to be eliminated.