Democracy, the Big Game

The ball is in your court

The word, democracy, is bandied about quite a bit. Politicians love to use it. Dictators swear their country is a democracy. The People, that would be you and me, love to apply the word, especially when it concerns their political ideology. The argument goes something like this: my party is more democratic than your party.

And then there are few people, like me, that find democracy to be nothing more than a Big Lie. Socrates did. He died for his belief. That’s right, boys and girls, the great Athenian democracy ordered the philosopher to take his own life.

Does that change your mind any about democracy? Does it bother you, at all, that 51% of your neighbors can vote for you to die?

The word, democracy, translated from the Greek means people power. That the people of a state have the power to make decisions about their state. This power is manifest through elected representatives. Each eligible voter has a say in how the state is run, so they come to gather to vote for an individual to represent their voice. The big trouble with this method is that whilst a majority wins, that is, their voice will be heard, a sizable minority loses, and their voice will not be heard. California attempted to fix this issue by allowing an open primary. This resulted in the Democrats taking control of the state. So the fix ended up causing an even more lopsided result than the old way.

Democracy that is the issue, not the voting system itself.

Historically, democracies fail. It failed in Athens. That should tell us something, about how human beings will keep butting their heads against a wall until they die. Only then, are they completely out of the game.

Democracies fail because the people who, supposedly, hold the power, get lazy about their responsibility in the game. They love to vote in people who will vote in money schemes, and build up bureaucracies to pass the money around. Which is, of course, a jobs program for the well connected. Nonetheless, what most bureaucracies do, people can do for themselves. Every town can have a private social services, to help those who cannot help themselves. Private companies are much more efficient than a large bureaucracy. Bureaucracies spend about 10 cents on every dollar to actually help those people in distress. That money, here’s the irony, is collected by another bureaucracy. The IRS. This bureaucracy has the actual power of financial life and death over the people. So much for power of the people.

But this is stuff most people know. What they need to get into their head is that the government they elect is their responsibility. They pay for it. They vote it in. Therefore, anything, and everything, done by said government, is done in their name. That is why the army of one nation has no problem killing the civilians of another. You, Mister, Mistress civilian, are the people who put your government into power. That government is nothing more than an extension of you. Even if you didn’t vote for that particular politician, you are participating in the process when you step into a voting booth. The winner you didn’t vote for still belongs to you.

Back in the day of monarchs, it was at least acknowledged that people had no say in such things as who held power. It was plain as day that kings went to war with kings. Peasants, unless called up for fighting duty, had no say, and were left out of the battles. After all, if a king wanted your kingdom, they wanted it intact. Today, with an air war, there is no distinguishing of who is a peasant and who is a part of the ruling class.

Except that now, with the use of satellites, we can distinguish where the leaders are.

Is that why Putin is in his bunker?

In remembering the end of WW2, the Americans hit two ordinary cities in Japan with their nukes. They could have hit the emperor’s palace. Why didn’t they? Why sacrifice the people? Is it because the people, even in an empire, are, ultimately responsible for their leaders? After all, without the people as followers, there are no leaders.

Among the animal groups, it is the leaders that are taken out by other leaders. The strong take on the strong. Human beings would do well to follow that pattern. Let the leaders duke it out. Like the dueling knights of old, let there be a melee on an eric of battle. We can pull up our beach chairs and watch. Putin can take on Zelenskyy. Directly. No blowing up of buildings, no tanks driving down the street. Just two guys on the field.

There is the answer to that old question, what if they gave a war, and no one showed up? Except to sit on the sidelines whilst two leader smashed one another.

That is the sort of power the people have. Just don’t show up for a leader’s bull shit. Not in the killing fields or the voting booth. Cooperative people can work out things, like where a road needs to be, and what company to hire to pave it. Yes, it would take effort, and yes, natural leaders would emerge. How far those leaders can go is up to the people power. But when you stop playing the game, you stop the immoral leaders.

Wake up, people, and take responsibility. Use your people power to send these immoral, power mad individuals packing. All of them. Mayors to presidents, assign them to the old dustbin.