DYSFUNCTIONAL EUROPEANISM

On Democarcy

The West turned towards democracy at one time, but is now turning away. (something else has happened and the West is turning away.) They may not be admitting to it -- not yet anyhow. (I cannot wait to hear what how they frame this when they actually they will now take away our rights.) Don't forget about in ancient Greece, where democracy was an important part of that society. But apparently we have come to another turn in the road; we must admit to it. This is done by our leaders. Apparently, leadership is taking this U-turn.

In a democracy persons hold different opinions. But this seems to be no longer sustainable, with our differences really doing damage at this time. Different opinions are not the end of a society. The differences are part of what democracy means; this is natural to democracy. There needs to be something that persons all have together in common, but it might be pretty abstract or distant. In any case, free people will not necessarily agree on everything. That is not what "Freedom" means. We are humans, living a relative existence. We are not Gods, nor are we terribly wise beings such as Buddhas or saints. New ideas are necessary and helpful. They are not a hindrance, not in a working democracy. But, yes, something done changed. Simply turning against democracy is no answer. Yet the leaders of the United States are doing this. It is major, major news. It is no exaggeration. It is already leading to chaos in places like Israel and Ukraine and, in the near distant past, Iraq and Afghanistan. We are about to see the voters turn away from it. The problem is, they have nowhere to turn.

In the U.S., Canada, Germany, and other places, the established powers in office now make the path away from democracy, and here in my country, the good old USA, one of the parties turning hostile to the democratic way of life in the "US" -or, as I prefer to render it -is the US/American "Democratic Party." Amy Klobuchar, for example, recently tried to stop a robot -this was Amazon’s "Alexa" -from ever, ever recommending any Substack.com article! Huh? This is simply unbelievable; Substack has plenty of pro-government writers but they have some radicals as well. The symbol of the Klobuchar party is the donkey. For both Republican and Democratic parties, the symbols are neutral animals, and while the symbol does not express a specific point of view but rather the shape of an animal, an elephant being another one, then is is true that that BOTH symbols have made this U-turn, and no animal apparently likes democracy. Not anymoret. I don't care if you are a horse or an elephant, but both elephant and donkey are turning away from what has always been the American way. So, they changed they minds! Or so it seems to me. And they now both stand for the same thing. That is to say, illiberalism.

From here what I was going to ask was: What is it specifically that makes a democracy work? My answer is that it works when there is a common forum, which is a commonality of the whole society. The society owns the forum. So, what about the 'Forum' of Rome? Well, that’s a famous one, a place where the sides may come together. (Without killing one another, which the Romans did not necessarily succeed at. Right, Brutus?) But you do not have to agree anyplace else. At minimum, if your society can hold fair elections, and come together in a forum such as the domed Capitol buildings we have that arise majestically in our capitols, replete with the Greco-Roman architectural materials, your society has enough in common to be a democracy. So, yes, there does need to be that place where all members of the society have a common something in the little noggins. Essentially, they agree -- to *disagree*. This is not always that easy either.

My memories are that there was such a thing, that there was in the culture some semblance of democracy, at one time. We had our disagreements. That is a feisty history in itself, but we survived. For such disagreements we definitely *had* back in those old days before COVID-19 (which serves as the marker of this transition, although it goes back to the 2016 election between the bogus Hillary and a candidate named "Silly Donald," or "Donald the Fool.") But the world did not come to an end. And also, some bad things were done to some ethnic groups, groups that include American Indians or Negros, & etc. People have mostly now admitted this. So this is not really the exact problem.

These transgressions of the past are of course is what fuels the Woke Left. Although these were horrible travesties, that does not mean I am in favor of the intellectual failure called the "Woke" Left. I do not understand how they are a real Left, because they arebased in Left references intellectually, and they want special treatment for certain people precisely because of the label. This is what I always considered laughable and why I refused to support this movement from the first I read about it. Equality is not "identity." They demand special specific rights because, in short, of who they are (identity). I thought that was the orignal problem. Now, "who you are" may be open or closed. In democracies, it is not closed. Making the "oppressed" the new oppressor does not change the anti-democratic nature of their activism. It creates a different winning group. What difference would that make? They are racists. Plus, they don't know how to THINK. It is a cultural and intellectual failure. Where are out critics on this? Why the great silence of the old left?

So, what does a society need, for it to be a democracy? This is the quesiton I ask here. A very good question. It does not have to be that all human societies are democracies. But it is so foundational to US/America that I think we need this. At issue here is the fact that we *have* be something related to a democracy, because we don't know any other way to do it. That is the only heritage this young country ever had. It is the height of foolishness to think one may just throw it away -- the direction towards which Ms Amy Klobuchar and others are moving is sheer chaos. It won't work, that's all I have to say!

To act as a state, of any sort, what is necessary humanistically is that there be a stable foundation, and you cannot just whip a rainbow flag out of a hat. So the base ethnicity is white, and as a democracy we can pivot from there and explore the options. I.e. the West has been European in style, has it not? It was that by default, for a long time; and that gives some idea of how a democracy must work because you need a basis. Of *course* there are flaws. But we must consider the virtues of being practical. We cannot continue with the divisions we have as of today.

You only need a semblance of democracy. You only need for the society to be sincerely trying. That is only to say: you need INTEGRITY.