|
Tilted
|
You salute the rank, not the person inside the uniform. The buck stops on the desk of the office that has been occupied by Lincoln and Roosevelt, not on the desk of the guy who won an election.
It's a noble theory. Works well in Kleinpolitik thinking. But for me, if the system itself includes (as ours does in the USA) the notion that dissent (of a polite kind) and dialectic lead to better decisions (hence, democracy), then the notion doesn't work as long as:
a) plenty of people agree that the leadership is sought by a man not an institution
b) the man seeking it does not command the respect (note: I did not say agreement, I said respect) of a sizable minority
In other words, there are plenty of folks out there (and I'm one of them) who think the system has broken down; who think that George W. Bush isn't part of the debate. To me, it's not a "political opinion" to agree or disagree with this particular President (and, to smaller degree, his party) since they are so busy SQUELCHING rather than participating in debate. It's not a "political opinion" to be discussed, it's a fact.
I personally feel I no longer live in a democracy. I've been to the social democracies of Europe and to the market democracies of southeast Asia and I'm damned sure, the conformist consumerist society of America is actually a very subtle form of Fascist state.
And if you think that thought (previous graf) then you can't "discuss" whether Bush is the right President, or his policies the right choices, from WITHIN a democratic framework. You can't go, "Umm, he got elected so we need to be helpful" or even "Umm, he didn't actually WIN that election, he LOST it and then cheated, so we need to work the system to BEAT him next time." Instead, all you can do is moan for the loss to humanity.
The American experiment, as envisioned by (for example) Jefferson, is over. Doesn't mean other good things can't come from the conformist consumerist undemocratic non-meritocracy thing we've created, and I love it for a lot of other reasons:
triumph of personal civil freedoms (note: not a necessary condition of democracy, in theory)
economic powerhouse with opportunity for some lucky few to REALLY live high on the hog (note: not a necessary condition of democracy ever) (second note: radical maldistribution of wealth will lead to intense social discord soon)
verbal freedom as guaranteed by First Amendment (I love the right to complain)
pleasant climate, free travel to pleasant locations year round (imagine being trapped in certain parts of Soviet Russia and therefore being politically snowbound all your life!)
technologically advanced, leads to material comfort and enjoyment (movies, internet, etc.) (note: not a condition necessary for democracy at all)
sexually more liberal than most "traditional" societies (almost entirely contrary to most democracies, in human history if not in the present)
it includes my "home," the landscapes and institutions I grew up in, so I have fond memories
cartloads of consumer choice (three types of Raisin Bran, seventy types of automobile tire, etc.) (an idiotic outgrowth of capital-based investment strategies as a foundation for speculative investing in stock markets, and in no way necessary for democracy)
But none of these (and other) benefits has much at all to do with either (1) demonstrating we're "democratic" or "free" or (2) the "best damn country in the world." So far, we AREN'T, necessarily. We MIGHT be, but the things I've listed don't prove the case to anyone who prefers different things. Things like:
freedom to not worship, and to voice his opinion on the idiocy of religion, and to not be directed by a political leader who invokes a monotheistic Protestant Christian God as though such statements were not an affront
freedom to walk around naked
freedom to be assessed as "valuable" or even "desirable" in a manner independent of material wealth (imagine if fast TYPING SPEED and a DSL line were considered sexy!)
right to treat women like chattel, by wrapping them in beekeepers outfits and so forth
right to enjoy physically fits sights all the time, rather than having to observe obesity in all locations
visceral connection with the land because of walking and working it in one's hands, leading to deep spiritual understanding of man's role in the life cycle
love of sports other than hockey / football / baseball / basketball (those which are, surprisingly, quite undemocratic -- the first three require high levels of material wealth for outfitting, and hence tend to create class divisions in the childhood levels; the middle two have a designated field position of "kingpin" whom everyone else WATCHES play; etc.)
freedom not to be derided by most foreign nationals simply because my nation hikes about the globe deliberately making enemies rather than friends
immortality
(heh, just thought I'd throw that in to see if you were listening...)
So, whether or not this is "best" is obviously, to me, not arranged yet. And we aren't working on making it better, we're working much harder on making everyone else worse in the name of making them better. I don't get it.
__________________
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche
|