links

[tielan]

Medium: Why American Democracy Was So Easy To Destroy

Americans tend to think that “democracy” is the exercise of voting every few years, and watching cable news in between. But it is no such thing. When we speak of “elections,” we merely refer to the means of democracy. Democracy, more properly thought of, is the enactment — and the expansion — of equality, freedom, and justice. The daily practice, if you like, of these three great endowments — they are the fundamental democratic goods, the ends to which the means of democracy, elections, votes, and so on, merely exist to sustain and nurture. And yet it is precisely in these three ways that American democracy never really became much of a democracy at all. When Americans were busy sorting themselves into tribal castes, enacting their hierarchy of personhood — or being sorted that way, if you like — then it can’t be said that democracy was really occurring in any real way. Precisely the opposite was, in fact — a kind of flight from, corrosion of, refusal to consent to, genuinely democratic norms, values, and institutions.

Hard reading, but boils it down pretty effectively, I think. And yes, I see this in the Americans defending what's happening right now. They're so caught up in the fairytale of equality, freedom, and justice for all that they won't see what's actually happening. Or they don't care so long as they got theirs.

Comments

[scribblemyname]

It's a good article, but it fails to mention that America was never founded to be a democracy and only started getting called one by the "aspirational" but not the founders. It was meant to be a majority rule, specifically in rebellion against a monarchy or oligarchy where a tiny amount of people get to speak over the majority of the people. In fact, the words of the founding congress against democracy were harsh and vitriolic, believing it an unviable form of government that would descend into mob rule then tyranny.

And leaving that out does make me wonder how much the writer actually knows about the origins of America. I was rather surprised to learn that as a kid because everyone talks about democracy but America was never designed to be a democracy and it even trying to be one is a relatively recent development.

[monanotlisa]

Yeah -- it's a national myth and always has been; certainly a country that had slavery far longer than the home country of England, and an apartheid culture even after, should know better intellectually. But, alas.

[kore]

Quite good, and depressing.