Democracy or bust

 

Politics. You can tell how people relate to this word by the way they use it. “I’m not much interested in politics,” for instance, equates it with the day-to-day news about our current government, elections, party dynamics, etc. A narrow definition.

               By whatever word we use, it’s clear that the setting and enforcing of the principles under which we form community—and function as community—existed before the word was coined. In families, in schools, in workplaces, on the roads, in the economy, the making and respecting of agreed-to behavioural expectations in a community is the necessary defense against chaos.

               How behavioural expectations come to be, how they are altered, how they are enforced … and most importantly by whose authority … is fundamental.

The “benevolent dictator” model has a long history: give all authority to the smartest and/or the most powerful person or group and trust them/him/her to rule for the good of the community/nation. For obvious reasons, the track records of Czars, kings and dictators haven’t been great; people’s revolutions have generally become inevitable, if only because “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The model, however, of privileged power and subservient masses has been the norm historically, holdover traces evident in assorted caste systems, racism, and the reversion to authoritarianism, a current phenomenon in many Western democracies. The equal value of individual humans, the sharing of life resources, democracy in other words, has been an evolutionary step in the human species’ adaptation making survival more likely. Unfortunately, evolution can be exceedingly slow, and can suffer devastating reversals. Witness, for instance, the recognition by Lenin that Czarist authoritarianism was funneling resources from the hungry peasantry to the privileged class, and the initiation of a revolution that was meant to be democratic. Then flip past the Gorbachev recognition that dictatorship of the masses had simply become authoritarian with new players, and another attempt at democracy was given a chance to become the better alternative. And flip to today, where we cringe at the reassertion of Czar-like privilege against docile subservience under Putin.

               Either we haven’t taught its principles well enough, or we ordinary Canadians aren’t knowledgeable enough on average to recognize that democratically choosing the people’s authority over law-making is crucial. Not important; crucial! One reason is simple: in this age of open, ungoverned communication, our vulnerability to lies and propaganda is magnified; the net effect is obvious in the USA, where lies are becoming equal agents for the division of the population into victors and vanquished, pure vitriol thriving in a sea of ignorance and misinformation.  

               More importantly, a functioning democracy has potential to engage all citizens in the process of community building. Having equal responsibility with all our neighbours to choose lawmakers of quality and dedication means that citizens bear responsibility for both success and failure … and feel it. It’s an ideal almost impossible to reach under the antiquated Westminster form of democracy[i] where the party system serves to reduce elections to rivalry among Liberal Party fans, Conservative Party fans and Fringe Parties’ fans. The degree to which such dubious loyalties distract from substantive policy discussion is evident at every election and serves us poorly.

The cry for policy direction in Canada today is loud and multi-faceted: elder care, child care, global warming mitigation, military spending, national debt, the list is long and our political parties are too busy finding ways to discredit each other to engage us in solutions. 

And we are to blame in this: we have become like children happily playing in the back seat of the car because we’ve confidence that our parents will protect us and bring us to where we need to go. We’ve allowed ourselves to both feel and act as the disengaged, the ignored. Too long out of the public policy forum, we don’t even demand that candidates for parliament publicly answer questions regarding their fitness to represent the needs of the constituency, instead, we vote “like daddy and grandpa did,” or resign ourselves to complaining ineffectively when a certain policy change affects us personally.

Keeping the electorate engaged at the policy debate level is vital to the health of a nation. Otherwise, a movement of protest against those in charge may escalate and spread like a wildfire (fueled by the gasoline of social media, I might add), ending in the formation of cult-like fraternities. This is what the GOP in the USA has become; disgruntled with life as it is, that movement has abandoned hopes for democratic self-determination and placed its hopes in a messianic intervention. That America could fall under the dictatorship of a latter-day Josef Stalin or a privileged oligarchy like Putin’s Russia is a possibility to be taken seriously.

Read the signs, people. In the USA, dialogue (at least according to the news services) is not about solving communal problems, nation building. It’s composed mostly of hateful diatribes between evermore distant factions, laced with ad hominem[ii] attack and counterattack. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party of Canada leader is decidedly short on alternatives on the pesky issues of the day, but long on fomenting hatred, assigning blame to the democratically elected Prime Minister.

The trend toward mistrusting democracy and giving authoritarianism another look is understandable in the light of globalization and all that that entails. It’s no longer an option to assume that cooperative living is only necessary in one’s locale, one’s colony, one’s tribe, one’s village or town. A problem like global warming, where cooperative effort by the entire globe is called for demands a new vision that’s slow in coming. Ethnicism, racism, nationalism, sexism and the other “isms” offer no solutions to such a global threat; thinking as global citizens is required, and institutions more democratic than the United Nations must lead the way.

So you or I vote one way or the other because, “I’m a liberal/conservative/ socialist/anarchist.” We’re not, actually. You and I approach a given issue conservatively, or liberally, even anarchically if necessary. I’m a socialist when it comes to resource sharing; but on the sacredness of a humanist moral code or environmental conservation, I’m a doctrinaire conservative. Democracy demands that we are generally knowledgeable about issues and choices. To support a political party like we support our favourite football team isn’t good enough. Democracy falters when “herd mentality” replaces knowledgeable, thoughtful dialogue and functioning citizen fora.

 All this is politics. To say “I’m not interested,” is to say that the welfare of tomorrow’s children is their problem, not mine. If that mindset prevails, we’re likely to support a party with the appropriate label, rather than candidates that seriously seek solutions to threats like nuclear war, global warming.  

The regression to authoritarianism, the failure of democracy in addressing the severe trials facing us today may well be for us what a massive meteorite was for the dinosaurs.      

---

[i] For a comprehensive description of Westminster democracy, see Westminster system - Wikipedia

[ii] “Ad hominem is a type of argument or attack that appeals to prejudice or feelings or irrelevantly impugns another person’s character instead of addressing the facts or claims made by the latter. It is considered a fallacy [in logic], as it attempts to discredit someone’s argument by personally attacking them rather than discussing the argument itself.”