• =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=9CTyranny_is_probably_established_out_of_no_other_r?=

    From gggg gggg@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jan 8 07:50:49 2021
    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html

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  • From Ed Cryer@21:1/5 to gggg gggg on Fri Jan 8 19:32:45 2021
    gggg gggg wrote:
    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html



    The problem seems to lie, for me at least, in the very definition of "democracy". The people rule. But who are the people? Who were the
    "demos"? Am I people? Are trailer-trash people? Are black humans people?
    I'm sick of people who declare "I do this in the name of the people".
    I'm sick of "I win this award as the people's champion". All I assume
    from this is low-life people; people who feel utterly excluded from the power-house. And where do they come from? Society itself, or some
    family's inner working's? Some people with low self esteem?

    I can't see any alternative to representative democracy in our modern
    mass states. It's not utopia, but it's the best of the constitutions on
    offer.

    Some Iraqi citizen might disagree; as might someone in Tunisia also.
    They'd say that Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi held their country together
    about as best it could have been held together. And that our western
    ideas have utterly destabilised affairs and let in chaos. And that we westerners have stuck our unknowing fingers into things we don't
    understand; specifically into the mind-set of peoples who see democracy
    as nothing more than a licence for immoral behaviour.

    I believe that presidential father and son Bush had a mistaken view that
    all you had to do was wipe out the dictator and democracy would arise automatically. Like some kind of phoenix from the ashes. But no! It
    didn't happen.

    Democracy seems to work only when the populace as a whole has reached a tipping-point in education; education for all, minimum wage, benefits.
    When those at the bottom can see some way upward. A very Marxist view of things, I know; but that's me and my upbringing.

    Ed

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