Originally Posted by roachboy

so in the end, what keeps cropping up here is that democracy is too much a hassle...like bernard shaw said, socialism would be nice if it didnt eat up so much in the way of evenings and weekends. reversing this, what the same argument would say is that leisure is more important that anything apporaching actual democratic processes. so for example....the ability to lay about in a chaise lounge, drinking mai tais and dreaming that you are james bond, is more important than exercizing anything approaching control over the situations that shape your life.

[[for the record, i have no problem whatsoever with the laying about in a chiase lounge drinking mai tais and imagining i am james bond part----it is like going to a cool amusement park---what i dont understand is the conception that this type of----o what shall we call it---leisure structured by a rum line--so straight leisure, level leisure---is somehow antithetical to a democracy.]]

on the other hand, i can perhaps imagine where this kind of thing comes from if i take off from the---at best mangled----understanding of athenian democracy in the post above. if you dont know anything about athenian democracy but insist that it is the model for thinking about democracy, if you dont know anything about the history of athens, if you dont seem to know anything about basic methodological problems with thinking about history (ever hear of the teleological fallacy? want a textbook example? read your post again, alansmithee) i guess you could arrive at this kind of conception of democracy and its implications for vital leisure time.

perhaps all this functions together in trying to imagine people having and exercizing real power somehow wedged on top of the present american socio-cultural order. if you stay trapped in this sorry frame of reference, of course democracy would not easily fit here because the socio-cultural system operates to the exclusion of it.
except as a nice word that makes people feel better by saying it, a kind of discursive prozac you can pop when the reality of your situation gets too depressing and the urge to actually think about why shit is as it is gets too strong to fight any other way.

i dont get it. democracy in any serious form would require massive changes in how the present order operates at every level.

but before i get too carried away, i feel my chaise lounge beckoning. i'll make myself another mai tai and turn up the volume on the sound system, which gives me access to secret agent net radio. i am sure that if i drink enough maitais the arguments in favor of the total disempowerment of people that keep coming up in this thread---- which i think was going in a quite different at its outset----will make sense.
or maybe it wont matter.
either way, i get to be james bond for a while.