Thoughts on an overused word
you can't save something that doesn't exist
“I cannot too often repeat that Democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted.”
- Walt Whitman
By now I suspect many people are tired of hearing about we have to celebrate, defend, save, mourn the death of - democracy. It’s hard enough for me to write about it with a straight face given the total confusion regarding this term, a deliberate confusion resulting from its continuous abuse. “Democrats” in the United States are the worst offenders here as they genuinely believe they get to define this term as a euphemism referring to themselves. “Democracy is under threat” essentially reads as “we’re under threat of losing.” Democrats’ nonchalance with supporting blatant authoritarians - kings even - when their geopolitical interests align with the US exposes their true disdain for popular sovereignty. It’s true the Republicans have largely given up on any pretense of caring about democracy either. They represent that strain of the American consciousness which was never that in love with democracy to begin with. As I have argued previously, we have to consider the two parties (and most political parties globally) as aspects of the same phenomenon or else risk being dragged to one side or the other.
The phenomenon is unaccountable power, and the best solution offered by human ingenuity so far is a social innovation called “democracy,” literally meaning “rule by the people.”
One might notice that the language employed by most so-called defenders of democracy resembles that of a custodian of an ancient temple, perfected centuries ago and to be protected at all costs from a hostile world so that its arcane rituals may continue unmolested. If this democracy is so fragile that even one election of the wrong people could potentially cause its complete collapse, then that was never a very strong democracy. Certainly “government” is a messy affair full of historical quirks, naked ambition, hypocrisy, and bureaucracy. “Politics” is no less unpleasant and occurs regardless of one’s chosen governmental system, and is not much more ennobling than any other human popularity contest.
“Democracy” need not be that. Democracy is an ideal. It’s like happiness - everyone thinks they want it, deserve it even, but no one knows how to get it, and often end up making themselves miserable in the process of trying. Of course, giving up on finding happiness altogether is a poor solution to the problem of life, just as giving up on democracy is a cop-out to the problem of human society. What is required is a careful reconsideration of the goal and the conditions it requires to genuinely flourish, and to reject the attitude that either is a static object one can possess or lose.
By identifying the ideal of democracy with the deeply flawed state of its present manifestation, representative electoral democracy, our current rulers and their hangers-on have virtually guaranteed apathy and cynicism among the public, its most deadly poison. Who in their right mind would want to get involved with this mess? Politicians continually degrade the supposed sanctity of their offices and then turn around and wonder why it is that democracy is losing legitimacy all around the world. It is because they can only see it from the narrow confines of their own egos, as a mechanism that catapults them into an illusion of their own importance. Watch any powerful politician speak and you will see a stultified individual pathologically out of touch with themselves and the world around them.
One redeeming aspect of the American system above others is that it does not categorically foreclose on popular sovereignty, even if most of the people in power are fearful and dismissive of it. We may wish that authentic democracy can be organized with the official sanction of our government, as it sometimes has been throughout history. But today this is to seek the blessing of the foxes guarding the hen-house. They have no use for a competing view of democracy that does not privilege them. A lively and generative democratic system that is actually engaging meaningful portions of the population would necessarily produce downstream effects leading to better representation at the highest levels. Leadership is always necessary, but typically we get the leaders we deserve, not the ones we need.
I do not claim to have all the answers about democracy. That would be pretty undemocratic of me, after all. What I do feel strongly about is the necessity of freeing this term from its ironic bondage to arbitrary power. This can only happen when democracy is conceived of not as a noun but as a verb. Democracy is a collective activity that works with, rather than against, the complexity of human social life; i.e that no one person can ever have all the answers to common problems, and that these problems cannot be reduced to slogans or ballot items. The activity of government itself has to be meaningfully opened up, not only through citizens’ assemblies but any number of myriad techniques that together could begin to actually move the rudder on the creaky ship of state. We have a lot of imagining left to do on this.