I am skeptical of consensus also. It is easy to frame issues and opinions to create the illusion of consensus for a time. Democracy can back this up with demographics, statistics - it can allow for more transparency and accountability, but there is still a degree of consensus involved in hopefully being able to trust the results.
What usually subverts democracy tends to be the lack of real two-way accountability with representatives. People can promise nearly anything. And since those who they represent cannot easily elicit compliance or replace them, power gets entrenched quickly and then nation states appear to have agenda of their own, rather than facilitating the will of the people.
The issue I see is not that of whether or not to vote, but rather what to vote for, and how to see it through. For instance, creating, changing, or dissolving treaties, legislation, etc. Voting for delegates and what these delegates actually do is more like what I consider meaningful democracy. A participatory process rather than âleave it to the professionalsâ. Where I think that âthe leftâ has hurt most over the past few decades in the US is the unwillingness or inability to organize in any formal way. Lots of great efforts towards raising awareness about important social issues and injustices. But little organization which practically counters the hegemonic political and economic schemes that we are dealing with.
Another matter is that when people are free to organize, that minorities are also able to act and further causes instead of hoping that somebody else instead will do something.
My thinking is coming from a more or less socialist libertarian / anarcho-syndicalist point of view. People need organization and structure in order to accomplish anything, but this needs to come from the people rather than be imposed upon them.
You know, in all seriousness, has there ever been another war in history where the winners told the losers âOK- now come have full and equal representation in our government !â WTF is up with that?
The Catch-22 there is that making informed decisions involves education. When masses of people are conditioned to instantly sell out to their exploiters, or chase ideological bugbears, this serves the interests of an elite minority. Part of the problem is that in being exploited, the masses are not taught how to make good decisions (my relatively value-neutral meaning of âgoodâ being ânot completely short-sighted and impulsiveâ), but instead are taught to be useful as a resource. The current industrialized techno-marketing system I think actively exploits peopleâs capacity for compulsive behaviors. This allows people to act without choice, while thinking that it was their idea all along.
Any system which deliberately exploits human cognitive faults rather than helping people to overcome them seems to me obviously deserving of scrutiny.
I have this thing about betrayal of the public trust. Crooked cops, that judge who literally sold children to a for-profit prison- these are the only people Iâd actually consider lower than child molesters- so contemptible that I actually donât think thereâs any punishment too cruel or barbaric for them.
Because really- we choose to be a society of laws which respect human rights. When the people entrusted with upholding those laws ignore them, they take that choice from us. They create a society where those laws may as well not exist. Thats the dynamic they choose to live under.
For me, not succumbing to barbarism isnât about the punished, but the punishers. There are plenty of people I think donât deserve any protection, nor even justice, but I believe a culture that lets mine or any other opinion outweigh equal and civilized law is little better than the law of the winner. Connected is the simple truth that violence begets violence. If there is no standard independent of the victorsâ will, the victors lose all moral authority.
Remember, the North in the American Civil War was far far from an egalitarian utopia. Even by the European standards of the time, which certainly werenât without racism themselves, the Northern States were deeply and profoundly racist. Had the North simply executed every slave owner and their families - and make no mistake, executing an entire class of male landowners and not their wives, children and extended families would have sown a resistance unlike anything groups such as the Klu Klux Klan were able to muster - the United States government would have lost any moral authority to govern not only the South under Reconstruction, but their own citizens.
This is why tribal warfare between warlords throughout history has so often resulted in genocide. If youâre going to massacre the people you defeat, you better not leave anyone to take their place. And even then, your power becomes contingent upon your continued strength, and lasts only until someone stronger comes along. Right by might is precisely the opposite of a republic, the opposite of self-rule through the democratic process.
Violence without restraint is barbarism.
In fairness, there are hybrid forms of anarchism and democracyâŚ
For the discussion on guns, there are so many comparisons with British police (at least, prior to 13 July 2016 - Iâll date-stamp that one) where the Brits take down people without really hurting them.
Havenât we all discussed the privatisation of police training in the USA previously? How companies like Blackwater (Xe) basically freak the police out?
And to be frank, I think the fitness levels of police should be higher in the USA. They should be better able to deal with a running suspect, for instance, than shooting them.
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a social worker, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he had great concern and said, âwhoever did this terrible crime needs help!â
(Although I agree that we should spend a lot more effort motivating people to support the community than punishing them for breaking laws, and we should ask ourselves tough questions when sectors of society are motivated to harm themselves and others.)
It is no more nor less than what we make of it, so there isnât much inherent, in any case. Democracy literally (I know⌠I knowâŚ) means âgovernment by the peopleâ, which is a label general enough to encompass quite a variety of systems and pseudo-systems. The city-state senate of ancient Athens and the Westphalen/post-revolution nation-state are but two interesting and somewhat useful models.
A problem which is endemic to contemporary representative democracies, arguably not inherent - but perhaps by design, is the notion of accountability being almost entirely asymmetrical. This yields concerns about what oneâs civic duties really are if/when the state plays games with your social contract. If the state and police derive their authority from the populace (as they like to say), then why do they not respect this authority when it comes to their policies or daily practices? Because it is almost entirely symbolic. Back in the 1700-1800s, it was less apparent to most people that the social contract of the nation-state was based upon false pretenses. So now in the era of modern communications there is an actual âcrisis of democracyâ and calling into question of many post-enlightenment values. Expecting populations to consent to be governed the same way as over the past 300 years isnât viable anymore.
Definitely a huge improvement over the Status Quo. While part of the problem is expectations and training, another huge part of it is we have people in the force with exactly the opposite mindset of what we need.
These policemen that are creating and escalating violent situations are just overgrown manboysâŚthey should NOT have power or guns until they can behave as well as a Kindergartner.
Actually, I think heâs on solid ground on that one.
Doesnât a contract require both parties to sign on and consent? We have a âsocial contractâ that was largely designed by some guys who died centuries ago thatâs been modified by people that many consider not to be peers if not openly hostile to them.
Fundamentally, it kind of has to be true by definition for nations, because youâre born into them and donât choose them (and mobility is extremely limited for those without resources).
What we donât need are a bunch of paramilitary wannabe gangs running around in an unrestricted roid-rage doing armed home invasions (no-knock raids), kidnapping (arresting) or murdering people based on their skin color or proximity to plant matter, and stealing from people (civil asset forfeiture) just because they know they can get away with it.
Andy Griffith, although fictional, is a great example of the police that we do need. Able to calmly de-escalate potentially dangerous situations and seeking to generally protect and serve their community with respect.
There are police out there like that, that do their best to make the world a better place. One might be tempted to feel sorry for them, but while they stand idly by, allowing (and therefore tacitly encouraging) their coworkers to act like criminals, we have no choice but to blame them all and trust none of them.
