Elections, and the end of the (democratic) world as we know it
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Is democracy working? Will it survive?
I've been reading e.g. (The World Is in Chaos Because) This Is the End of the Age of Democracy | by umair haque | Apr, 2022 | Eudaimonia and Co (eand.co) and If it Feels Like Our Societies Are Losing Their Minds, That’s Because They Are | by umair haque | Apr, 2022 | Eudaimonia and Co (eand.co) and it's been making me depressed. Cos it all sounds pretty accurate.
But it's also about to be some elections. And maybe we'll (in the UK) give some kind of fightback against the current government. But will it be enough? Is there hope while money keeps funneling upwards? Or is democracy doomed? "Things need to get a lot worse before they'll get better", some say. I fear they're probably right. Maybe somebody can re-illusion me, or @jonb can point me somewhere with answers.
2024 is bound to be a shitshow in the US. We've got war. Climate change still only beginning to bite. Ugh. How does a populous fix it? -
It’s a nice idea- everyone having a say- but it’s utterly corrupted by dodgy information flows
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It's not helped by some people being wilfully thick as well.
I'm not talking about poorly educated people, I'm thinking about people with much better education than me being deliberately thick.
SFV - reddave360 -
equinox_code wrote:It’s a nice idea- everyone having a say- but it’s utterly corrupted by dodgy information flows
This would seem to be it. It's not even anything as bluntly 'addressable' as 'show people the facts and they'll thing!!!", it's in environmental the richest sense. If you've breathed shit your entire span, you will not know it is shit. -
The power granted in a democracy far outweighs the ability to curtail it. We get one vote every 4.5 years but in that space it’s carte blanche to do anything. It’s such a blunt tool as well. Like people who vote can express their feeling on maybe one or two things (brexit) but this gives the conservatives to do anything (sell channel 4). It feels really unbalanced.
Accountability is also really low not even premier league managers get to underperform for 5 years even if they’re given 7 year contracts. -
I'm not really feeling this kind of despair and pessimism currently tbh, like things could and should obviously be much much better, but they could also be incredibly worse e.g. living in somewhere like Russia.
I'd need to see some decent data and analyses before I consider democracy to be 'doomed' in a general sense. -
incredibly worse e.g. living in somewhere like Russia
I thinks it's ultimately unreasonable to ask one context's participants to imagine it could be worse. You have to calibrate around relatives otherwise you're just asking people to put up with a slide down.
There will be instances where they're actually batshit considering actual material conditions, but you still have to basically meet them at their level to get anything started. -
America seems to be standing on the precipice of potentially turning away from democracy.
I’m not particularly concerned about the state of democracy in Europe in general and the UK in particular, despite this government. -
Brooks wrote:
This would seem to be it. It's not even anything as bluntly 'addressable' as 'show people the facts and they'll thing!!!", it's in environmental the richest sense. If you've breathed shit your entire span, you will not know it is shit.equinox_code wrote:It’s a nice idea- everyone having a say- but it’s utterly corrupted by dodgy information flows
Aye.
Education and all that. It needs changing to make people think critically and how to think generally. My old hobby horse.Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
Most people would seem not to have any interest in having a say, let alone getting educated. -
My FIL this morning said it feels less like politics and more like voting for your favourite football club these days.
Which is accurate, but I would argue that’s more in line with conservative voters (will always vote conservative no matter what) compared to those who lean left, who I find to be more discerning. But that’s just my narrow take on things.
I never really considered democracy to be ‘doomed’, just that a majority of people don’t hold the same values as me. Which is just something I’ve learned to live with. -
I think your fil is bang on. Most people are voting for the person not the policies. It's their brand, their team.
But I don't think the problem is democracy, i think its politics and I think this is why many (maybe rightfully) have tuned out. I don't want to vote for a politicians because of their allegiance or party. I want them to be good at doing the job of running the area or country. It often feels seems like people are asked to vote for an end product they don't need.
A radical thought is drop the personalities and just vote for the policies as they come up. Cut out the middle man (or woman). Most civil services would probably run the country fine without the interference of the political class.SFV - reddave360 -
I'd argue most people aren't even voting for the person, they're voting for the colour of the rosette.
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Thats probably trueSFV - reddave360
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The education solution always tickles me. As if any government will implement a system that might let people realise what they're up to.
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The internet has huge disruptive potential in this regard, something parents could do is attempt to teach their children how best to leverage it, with critical thinking etc. Significant societal progress might then occur, hopefully bypassing the top-down change catch 22 problem we have now. Breaking the cycle will probably take several generations.
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Who's going to teach the parents that they should do it?
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And what if the result is that more people vote for policies that are economy over wellbeing? Do you put your hands up and say fair enough?
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Kow wrote:And what if the result is that more people vote for policies that are economy over wellbeing? Do you put your hands up and say fair enough?
Yep. That's the thing with democracy, its not always the best policy.
E.g. brexit.
SFV - reddave360 -
Kow wrote:Who's going to teach the parents that they should do it?
A minority of parents takes it upon themselves to teach themselves, then they can teach others, who will teach others etc etc. A movement if you will. As you may have noticed we all have access to the sum of all accumulated human knowledge, it is very possible to self teach with the right motivation right now.
I'm not suggesting that this hypothetical situation is in any way ideal or desirable, of course it would be preferable to let benevolent overlords build the systemic infrastructure to allow real progress to flourish. But as that doesn't seem to be happening, or not as fast as we'd like, then I'm just throwing out the suggestion that some kind of grassroots attempt might be our best shot, and I recognise that there are many roadblocks in the way. -
I think it's important to acknowledge that when democracy is coopted by bad actors to do things like Brexit it isn't just lies and propaganda. There is often if not always an element of arogance, failure and neglect by the institutions and powers that came before.
It's not just education it is good faith and good democracy being enacted in the first place that leads to more good democracy. -
It's very odd to see some of what's happening in France with the election. If you thought voter apathy was deleterious in the UK.. what's going in France seems to be on a whole other level. AFAICT it's pretty much like as if the BNP 'cleaned up their act' a bit and had a shot at winning in our elections. Mental.
It kind of comes down to the "are people actually awful? Or just stupid/ignorant?" thing. Probably a bit of both here and there. -
I'd argue there is no good or bad democracy if you are judging by outcomes. It's a majority vote system, it works at its best when everyone votes, has equal value per vote and is clear about what they vote for. If a vote happens and there is a high turnout and ot leads to 95 percent of a country voting or it to be a religious based system than thats good democracy even though I think its a bad outcome.SFV - reddave360
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I've a choice between two Tories and two Lib Dems. Full Hobson.
Whenever anyone else throws their hat in they get blasted. Doomed region. -
Fairly comfortable defeat for Le Pen at least
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Lol
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Meanwhile, in Slovenia -
Slovenia's populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa looked set to lose a national election on Sunday as the environmentalist Freedom Movement party won more votes than his SDS party, according to an exit poll.
The election had been expected to be tight but the exit poll by the Mediana Institute showed the Freedom Movement leading with 35.8% of the vote, far more than expected, while the SDS had secured 22.5% of the vote.
That would give the Freedom Movement, which campaigned on the transition to green energy, an open society and the rule of law, 42 seats in the 88-seat parliament and the SDS 26 seats. -
Bit more info - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-24/nationalist-eu-leader-faces-potential-ouster-in-slovenian-vote
Opposition parties say he is undermining democracy. Many Slovenians agree, staging two years of almost weekly protests. Those addressed issues ranging from his government’s restriction of funds to public media critical of his policies to giving police too much power, making sweeping changes to state institution, and corruption -- issues that his ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is also accused of.
Like Orban, Jansa has courted euroskeptic leaders. He met France’s Le Pen when he chaired the EU’s rotating presidency last year and agreed with her that national constitutions supersede EU treaties, echoing other governments that have clashed with the bloc’s rule-of-law standards.
Slovenians “long for freedom, democracy, culture, and independent media that would promote kind and respectful discourse,” Golob said in a pre-election debate this week. He denounced what he called “a police state, dictatorship, teargas and water cannons” under Jansa.
“No thank you, that is what the people are saying to this government,” he said.
Exit polls show opposition winning Slovenian election
Exit polls in Slovenia’s parliamentary election on Sunday suggested an opposition liberal party won by a landslide, dealing a major defeat to populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who was accused to pushing the small European Union country to the right while in office.If confirmed in an official tally, the result means that the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, stands likely to form the next government in a coalition with smaller center-left groups.
Good shit, hopefully. -
I think one of the issues can be seen in this thread, which is that we view a particular kind of liberal representative democracy as democracy itself. Rather, it's one form of democracy, which can be more or less participatory, regulated differently, and so on.
One thing we need to stop the downward spiral is a sense that there are other ways of doing democracy, and it's not democracy itself that's at fault but the form of democracy (its attachment to capital, and low level of participation through voting alone), but obviously that's not something we're generally taught.
To improve democracy, you need a mass movement to demand or implement the changes (which is itself part of democracy), and the truth is there's little chance of that in a country like the UK. There's very little understanding of how to organise, even as living conditions get worse. Some other countries have a stronger culture of resistance and stronger belief through education in maintaining the quality of their institutions.
But I think globally, with the amount of data and control over information flows that big capital has these days, through traditional and new media, it's going to get more difficult to form oppositional ideas and narratives. In the UK, we'll see what happens when poverty really starts to bite into the middle of society, but so far it looks like more people are willing to turn to right-wing populism/fascism than positive alternatives.
One more thing. If you look at the Democracy Index (PDF - got to page 14), you'll see that only 21 countries are currently rated as a 'full democracy', with the UK in 18th position. The US is now ranked as a 'flawed democracy'. The top of the chart is mostly Scandinavian countries.
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