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The Language of Democracy
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoIs democracy a good idea? Is it working out for India and Mexico and the rest of the middle-income countries? We're all supposed to love Democracy by default but ... I don't know anymore.
- theklub 3y agoYou want a monarchy?
- Dalewyn 3y agoPersonally, I've always believed the best form of government is an absolute monarchy headed by a benevolent monarch. The problem with that, of course, is benevolent monarchs are few and far between.
- throw74774 3y agoBenevolence isn’t enough. They also have to be really smart, competent, and motivated.
- zx8080 3y agoProbably, both "benevolent monarchs" and non-corrupt democratic politicians do not exist in reality.
- cynicalsecurity 3y agoYou may be surprised your role in an absolute monarchy would be a horse manure cleaner, not a noble landlord you are imagining it in your head. Same would go for your children - with no possibility to change it. Have fun!
- weakfish 3y agoYou’re not truly engaging with the commenter in a debate. This comment is not in good faith.
- cynicalsecurity 3y agoHaving no other arguments, this attempt to appeal to "not having good faith" looks really weak.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Is democracy a good idea? Yes, but being a periphery state in the neoliberal economic order is not.
- XorNot 3y agoOr, if one takes their example countries situation into account: corruption is bad, and corrosive to everything good.
- krapp 3y agoMany people believe that every human is essentially equal to every other and has an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that a government that represents the will of the people, even imperfectly, is preferable to a dictatorship. I don't know why you would say we're all supposed to love democracy "by default" as if there weren't centuries of history, philosophy and bloody conflict behind that point of view.
- woooooo 3y agoMany people say that. Revealed preference raises its head when it comes to the real world, and it turns out American interest is a better predictor.
- krapp 3y agoAmericans, despite their bellyaching, live in a democractic republic and can afford to indulge in romantic fantasies about benevolent dictatorships (as they often do about civil war and revolution,) while remaining safe from (edit:likely) ever having suffer their consequences. People who have actually lived under dictatorships, meanwhile, very rarely seem to recommend it over democracy.
- woooooo 3y agoIt's a good system for us but it's not like we ask the world for a vote before doing things that affect others.
- jeezfrk 3y agoDemocracy is the worst form of government.... except for all the other ones (including unstable anarchy).
- zztop44 3y agoGovernment is a thing that forces everyone to follow their rules. You can’t opt in or opt out. On face value that’s extremely coercive and bad. I think of democracy as a “good idea” being not necessarily about being the system that delivers the best governance outcomes, but rather about providing some measure of legitimacy for the coercion inherent to government.
- ls612 3y agoPhrased another way, the strength of democratic systems is that they reduce the tail risk of extremely negative governance outcomes, not that they improve the expectation of overall governance outcomes.
- emilsayahi 3y agoDemocracy is a system of government, not an economic model. You could easily argue, simultaneously: 1. Capitalism has failed in those countries, even if in different times and places one could say capitalism has succeeded 2. India and Mexico have major issues with their democracies—if a democracy is a system of government in which the citizens of a state hold collective power over their government, then there are many obstacles preventing either country from having a well-functioning democracy. I can sympathise with your feelings that the current global status-quo is failing many people—I would agree—and I would argue India and Mexico are great examples of how unchecked capitalism and authoritarianism are causing an active erosion of democracy (and standard of living) in those two countries.
- bro_thebro 3y ago> Democracy is a system of government, not an economic model. For the longest time, "Democracy" the political system was bandied about to be the primary precondition for economic progress. The thinking was, that when people (countries) have democracy this somehow "empowers" them to become economically successful. This reasoning was fairly prevalent, after all, the U.S., the showcase of democracy, was such an economic powerhouse. Worth noting as well is that democracy was normally peddled with economic liberalization, free trade, etc. After China's rise however, the idea that democracy is a necessary for economic prosperity has more or less been debunked. China has demonstrated that democracy is not a precondition for economic prosperity. Now, developing countries are faced with the question, what political model should be followed? If economic prosperity is the objective, the Chinese model seems to be promising. On the other hand, what does democracy have to offer? Looking at the U.S. as the showcase of democracy, what does the U.S. have that a developing country would find worth emulating?
- claytongulick 3y ago> For the longest time, "Democracy" the political system was bandied about to be the primary precondition for economic progress. I agree with you. I think that mindset has a fundamental misunderstanding of the root cause of economic prosperity. Economic prosperity comes from liberty. Democracy and liberty are two very different things. For a long time, they were treated as roughly equivalent. China figured out that economic liberty, coupled with state sponsored abusive labor conditions and few ecological restrictions, can effectively compete with "democracy" where people are able to vote to regulate labor markets. In the face of this, Democracy is a weakness. After all, how can a Western economy that's voting itself (for example) four day work weeks and great work/life balance benefits compete with forced labor in the short term? I think it competes well in the medium to long term, as economic systems that maximize liberty seem to mostly win.
- dudul 3y agoYes democracy is a good idea. The idea that the people govern themselves. Now we can discuss how well the so called democracies of our time implement the idea. For example, the pavlovian association of election = democracies has always left me perplexed.
- marc_abonce 3y ago> Is democracy working out for Mexico? Yes. The biggest problem we face here is cartel violence which isn't caused by democracy at all, but rather by political corruption, which is only possible due to an extreme power imbalance. If anything, we need more democracy, specifically more accountability against corruption. Back when we were a "perfect dicatorship", government repression was even worse, as shown by the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968, but this information was censored by the government and even today we don't have the full list of victims. There's no reason to believe that going back to that system would make the country safer. On the contrary, the rules would most likely be allied with the cartels just like they are now but with no opposition to expose their abuses. This, of course, creates a kind of dilemma: in a liberal democracy you are allowed to expose and criticize the flaws of the system while the alternatives limit the flow of that information, so you end up in this situation when people compare the idealized propaganda of a non-democratic regime with the hypercritical journalism of liberal democracies and conclude that the latter are worse.
- mharig 3y agoYes. Unfortunately there exists no democracy on this planet.
- johnea 3y agoI very much agree with a lot of the conclusions. But the descriptions of experience, such as education just serving individual students whims, as opposed to providing rigorous knowledge of topics, I find completely counter to my personal experience. I went to university during the era or the writings, early 1980s. My course work in electrical engineering was very techincally rigorous. i got no credit for "radio programs", or anything like that. Even the few humanities electives I was reequired to take (I chose "History of Eastern Religions", "Survey of Art History", among others) where difficult courses requireing ressearch and informed writing. I consider myself very left aligned politically, but I do agree on the distruction currently being caused by DEI policies. The modern idea that one primarily needs to affiliate with a specific identity, this being practiced both among the wing-nuts and the woke-nuts, does appear very present, salient and central to the disintegration described as "the reign of universal ignorance" in the article.
- zztop44 3y agoI graduated in the early 2010s and mostly studying philosophy and gender studies. In my experience of that time period, these too were difficult courses requiring research and informed writing. Certainly, doing well at school required knowing the material and having something to say.
- nico 3y agoWhat democracy? Please show me a true democracy The US is not it
- TOMDM 3y agoIf that's your threshold then a true anything has never been tried.
- watwut 3y agoI mean, it has definitive flaws. Like convoluted rules that lead to capture by minority. And that minority is able tweak the rules further so that they need less and less votes to win more and more power.
- throw74774 3y agoEvery democracy has this.
- nico 3y agoAre you saying the US political system is the gold standard / state of the art democracy model?
- marc_abonce 3y agoDo you not consider the Swiss Confederation to be a democracy? If so, why not?
- 7373737373 3y agoAlso recommended: "The Language of the Third Reich" - the language of authoritarian fascism. It's scary to see aspects of it being used all around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_%E2%80%93_Lingua_Tertii_Imperii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_%E2%80%93_Lingua_Tertii_Im... This is taught in German schools, but should be taught everywhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_%E2%80%93_Lingua_Tertii_Imperii#/media/File:Characteristics_of_National_Socialist_Language_according_to_Victor_Klemperer_(1947).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_%E2%80%93_Lingua_Tertii_Im...
- peanut_merchant 3y agoOne of the examples here strikes a parallel with the US government's "Enhanced Interrogation" used as a euphemism for torture starting during the bush years. Straight from the Nazi playbook: "Verschärfte Vernehmung ("intensified interrogation"): torture"
- pyuser583 3y agoWe also use the phrase “concentration camp” (Konzentrationslager) to refer to death camps. Which is really weird as it’s not a common English phase, and seems to be a straight copy of Nazi propaganda.
- throwawaybutwhy 3y agoNot entirely correct, I'm afraid. Concentration camps were inaugurated by the Spanish and popularized by the British. Co-location of killing facilities and camps was not a common occurrence even in Germany, so there were many more concentration camps than death camps.
- cassepipe 3y agoFrom wikipedia's Christopher Lasch entry, here is a quote from his: ``` A feminist movement that respected the achievements of women in the past would not disparage housework, motherhood or unpaid civic and neighborly services. It would not make a paycheck the only symbol of accomplishment. ... It would insist that people need self-respecting honorable callings, not glamorous careers that carry high salaries but take them away from their families ``` This is very dishonest to me it seems to weaponize an existential seemingly anticapitalist critique ("The goal of life is not to accumulate money but to answer a calling) against feminism. Feminists were not disparaging motherhood or unpaid work like if it was above them to do it. They criticized the fact that it was considered their work and had indeed no opportunity for other callings That's not even an interesting angle of attack against capitalism because it tells you capitalism is only about people trying to get richer. Sigh, I'll pass. Addendum: This seems to fit "Romantic anticapitalism" as defined by Michael Löwy. He had some interesting takes about it IIRC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lasch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lasch
- whitemary 3y ago> Feminists were not disparaging motherhood or unpaid work like if it was above them to do it. Were? When are we talking about? This sounds like Lasch, in the 90s or maybe 80s, comparing 3rd wave feminism to 2nd wave feminism. However, now it sounds like he's critiquing 4th wave feminism, which is significantly more debased. I think you are talking past him either way, but it helps to be specific. Ultimately, your claims aren't contradicting his in my view.
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- colinsane 3y ago> Everyday political talk rejects the language of universality in favor of the idioms of affinity. To call a candidate or policy based or cringe, pilled or normie—terms without a fixed meaning even for those who invoke them—is to situate oneself in a particular group against an ill-defined mainstream. so too does this apply to “elite”, but the essay uses it liberally and a fun exercise is to try and replace each occurrence with its “plain” equivalent. > Obscurity impedes solidarity. don’t reveal your answer to the above exercise. if we do, we’ll discover that we’re all reading slightly different details into the text, and that may put us in conflict. you and i can be in solidarity against the “elites” only because of our differences which this term serves to obscure. > To write plainly (and read texts with the expectation of plainness) was to make information meaningful and persuasion possible. persuasion is about selling an image. information serves only to constrain the image. rarely do they work hand-in-hand.
- Georgelemental 3y agoThis is a magazine of by and for radical leftists. But today, the undisputed master of "plain style" is Donald J. Trump.