{"id":20143,"date":"2019-11-05T17:36:11","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T22:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20143"},"modified":"2019-11-05T17:36:11","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T22:36:11","slug":"democracy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2019\/11\/05\/democracy-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

I came across a thing I wrote three years ago\u2014a note about Democracy<\/a> written a few days ahead of the Presidential election, writing in part that This will be a trying few days, and may be very, very trying for some time after that.<\/i> And so it was, and is.\r\n

I clarified my thoughts the next day, saying that I wrote the note because I feared that we were falling out of love with democracy. I fear that even more now.\r\n

George Santayana wrote about the US that it could only sustain a democracy because everyone fundamentally agreed about everything they consider important. I disagree entirely with that assessment\u2014among the important things that people in the US disagree about fundamentally is who has been included in the democratic experiment in participatory self-government. It\u2019s frankly a bizarre take on US history. But I will say this: the US can sustain a democracy if and only if enough people feel that democracy<\/I> is among the most important things. And if what they mean by democracy has enough overlap (among enough people).\r\n

Here\u2019s what really worries me: I know a lot of people who feel convinced deep down in their bones that the 2020 election is hugely, irrevocably, catastrophically important. That if the Other Party wins and takes office, that the disaster that follows will be so immense and wide-reaching that\u2014well, that we can\u2019t be too nice about norms and means. That this time is different, and that while we would certainly never condone anything too far outside our principles, still\u2026\r\n

I am aware that the Other Side also feels the same: if our Party\u2019s Candidate wins in 2020, then the disaster that follows, etc, etc, and while we would certainly never etc etc.\r\n

And the thing is, I can\u2019t really criticize that attitude. If this country re-elects Our Only President, after having his personal corruption and anti-democratic attitudes amply demonstrated, then it is difficult to see a path forward to a trustworthy system of government. It really is profoundly dangerous, and people really will die, and many of our cherished (if always aspirational) values will be gone, if not irrevocably then at least so profoundly that it is hard to imagine how they will be restored. And, of course, for those who really believe that Our Only President is the victim of a vast conspiracy of civil servants, the press and the left, including the lower courts and law enforcement and of course the intelligence agencies, then again, were all of that true<\/i>, putting a member of my Party in the White House would complete the takeover and make it nearly impossible to do anything about it. Again, people really would die, and our most cherished values destroyed. And in view of that, how do I ask people to sustain the wavering belief that democracy is more important than that, or even that democracy is as important as that?\r\n

Particularly since \u2018democracy\u2019 doesn\u2019t mean, for most of them, the remarkable social experiment in developing a people capable of self-government. It just means having a reasonably responsive and responsible government with occasional elections that influence the eventual policy outcomes. Do people believe that elections influence outcomes? Do people believe that our elections are, on the whole, free and fair? Do people believe that the government is reasonably responsive or responsible? If they don\u2019t\u2026 then how bad would it be, compared to the catastrophic consequences of losing the election, how bad would it be if there were a few corners cut, a few bits of paperwork lost, a few yard signs knocked down, a few holes in a few windows at a few journalists\u2019 houses (only the most irresponsible of course), a few absentee ballots stolen, a few polling places shut, a few people arrested, a few rights suspended, a few fires set. Especially since you<\/i> wouldn\u2019t have to do any of that stuff. You would just have to not really worry about it if somebody\u2014somebody untrustworthy, probably on the internet\u2014reported that some of that stuff had happened, and that it had happened to the bad guys.\r\n

It\u2019s Election Day today, and I do still find Election Day a wonderful thing, even in this off-year election that only re-elects the town council and board of education. I love democracy, the whole filthy, screwy, impossible business of it. I hope to keep on loving it every time my side loses, and every time my side wins, for the rest of my life.\r\n

I hope.\r\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger did get a sticker, so that's all right.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20143"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20146,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20143\/revisions\/20146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}