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i enjoy the occasional reminder that america is not a democracy.
particuarly when it comes from conservatives (the website you link for sure...)
and when this reminder circulates through conservative media
"dont worry, little people--you are not free in any meaningful sense
because there is nothing really at stake in your participation in the electoral process, we can say anything..."
because, it seems, these folk think democracy is antithetical to "individual freedom"...democracy is communism....somehow this is linked, without the slightest analysis, to "socrates was killed by a democracy"--which you know about from plato, who was an enemy of democracy--a great philosopher--but an enemy of democracy.
it is understood as the "tyranny of the majority" without the slightest evidence, as if the information context particular to the bankrupt form of oligarchy rotation that we currently enjoy sets an eternal standard for information contexts.
as if information context could be the same if actual decisions relied on the deliberation of a collective.
as if the present kind of social subjectivity would be adequate for a democracy.
all without any analysis.
wow.
i guess there are frames of reference where simply citing one of the mystics who founded the current regime is in itself adequate--no need to do any thinking on the matter really, just cite jefferson.
apprently this is one of them.
so what i have learned this morning:
"individual freedom" is best preserved in a system that allows people actual power one day every four years, and even then mediates it with an appointed "collegial" body.
formal freedom is enough.
all you really need to do for americans to think they are free in any substantive way is to use the word alot.
apparently freedom works best when no-one is responsible for anything at the collective level. when there is no collective. when there is no deliberation. when there are no collective mechanisms. where there is no actual power excersized by the people. when there is only the fiction of power residing with the people.
that sounds about right.
thanks.
yet somehow the bush administration likes to talk about exporting democracy to iraq, which i just learned is a system that it does not have and does not want at home.
how does that work?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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