J -
John Adams reminded us: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
FWIW:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-worlds-oldest-democracies
I'm also a fan of the description of Democracy as "the Tyranny of a majority over a minority" tempered with the clause in Churchill's "...except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..."
The popular vote for Trump was roughly
74M which was *approaching* 47% of the total vote of 158M which
is almost half of the ~330M, so a mere 25% voted *for* Trump
and yet his supporters in the number of thousands storming the
Capital to try to overthrow that *claim* they are a majority.
Even Biden's 51+% is not a "majority of the people", albeit
*over* 25% FWIW... We can all shriek that "if you don't vote,
you can't complain" and I don't want to enumerate the myriad
reasons people might not vote (including being underage or
legally unable to (alien permanent residents, convicted felons
in many states, etc.) but the fact remains those non-voters
deserve proper representation *even if* they failed to do
something obvious to achieve it.
My own biases suggest that there are *very few* non-voting Trumpsters this time around, but *plenty* of people for whom the Dem's agenda is more supportive of (my view is that the Dems try much harder to represent *everyone* in their domain of representation than the Republicans who seem more inclined (not exclusively but significantly) to ignore the plight of the disenfranchised.
How does Germany's representative democracy fair in your opinion? Do you know what penetration of voting is there, and does your Parliamentary form include coalition building, etc. compared to our own stark flippy-floppy winner-takes all nonsense?
- Steve
I must say the images from CNN which we receive here in Europe are a bit disturbing. The mob that stormed the heart of American democracy felt like anarchy, like a fallback in barbaric ancient times - the time of Barbarians vs Romans or even the stone age. It is like Neanderthals found a way to use a time machine to travel into the 21st century: one guy was dressed in fur pelts and was holding a wooden stick like a wizard from Lord of the Rings, and one half-naked guy was wearing furs and horns (the one known as "Q shaman"). Long-haired bearded guys have been looting stuff like cavemen - in the center of Washington D.C.!
How is this possible in the oldest democracy of the world?
-J.
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