Some days, this is exactly how I feel:
The system is broken. It’s tainted and corrupt. Democracy itself is deeply flawed; it’s only as good as the electorate, and the electorate is a swine pit full of yahoos and holy rollers and used car salesmen.
But it’s the only system we’ve got.
So put away the torches and pitchforks. If democracy is a system that gives a voice to liars and scoundrels, chaos is worse, allowing the most unprincipled to freely claw their way to the top. We have to work within this system and get it to change.
I was unenthused about Clinton. She’s a creature of the establishment, and isn’t going to change the world, and in fact, will probably accentuate some of the worst features of the American way of doing things: a reverence for the status quo, a kind of selfish pragmatism, and a callous disregard for the billions outside of our borders. I’m even less happy with Kaine, because he seems to be the kind of blithe liberal who puts a smiling face on stasis. Worse, he’s a clear signal that the Democratic party has decided that the wretched boogeyman of Trump is so awful that they can just say “fuck you” to progressives and put up a slate of the same damned thing they always do and change nothing. What this country really needs for democracy to work is a sane, principled, responsible conservative party so that our liberal party has to really work to differentiate themselves…and so that when the liberals lose, as they do, the country doesn’t immediately descend into missile-launching, jesus-screaming, hate-mongering capitalist viciousness.
Resign yourselves. This isn’t the election that will revolutionize the country (we hope). November is a holding action. We need to hold the wolves at bay for a little longer, so vote for the Democrat at the top of the ticket. One immediate positive effect of electing Clinton/Kaine is that maybe the far right Republican party will react by becoming even more extremist and complete their self-immolation, so that a more rational party can emerge. (Unless they win, which means we’re in really big trouble for at least a generation, so don’t let them win).
Then please pay attention to something other than the presidential elections. It’s a disgrace that we get almost 2 years of media hype building the process for this one office into a giant suck of time and money, and then everything evaporates at the equally important mid-term elections, and the turnout drops off to shameful levels. Vote in every election, and for or against every candidate. Everything matters, your school board matters, your congressional representative matters, your senator matters, and yes, the president matters…but if we continue to elect the same idiots to the senate and house of representatives, the president matters less than you think.
But right now, we — and by “we”, I mean the Left, progressives and liberals and centrists, and even you so-called “classical liberals” and Libertarians and Rockefeller Republicans and cautious conservatives — have one job to do, and that is to stop the great orange fascist asshole from winning. That’s the number one priority for us all. Don’t screw it up. Don’t go flitting off to Jill Stein or Gary Johnson or some other spoiler. Hold your nose and vote for Clinton.
And if you don’t like the establishment Democrat — I don’t blame you at all — then work locally to get change in the years to come. Get good progressives into positions that can influence the government in productive ways. You don’t like the rules that rig the elections for establishment favorites, like this super-delegate nonsense, or the electoral college? Work to change those before they become a factor in future elections (I suspect everyone who is squawking now will forget about it immediately after this election, and then four years from now will start squawking in indignation again). If Clinton annoys you now, tough — she’s going to be the nominee. But you can support a primary challenge four years from now, if you start working now to build a climate that gives such a person a framework.
I swear, one of the worst things about the American system of democracy is the way we treat the trivial act of pulling a lever as the be-all and end-all of citizen involvement in politics, and the way this simple-minded approach to democracy leads to a crisis every four years.
You guys need a better system.
That’s partly a conscious creation of politicians. They benefit when the electorate is just dumb enough not to see through them, and they benefit when propaganda replaces fact or critical thinking in the curriculum. It’s a vicious circle, and blaming the ones with no power for whom participation in the indoctrination process is compulsory seems a little unfair, even though your statement is true on its face.
As opposed to today? Are you saying that today the principled claw their way to the top? Or are you saying that the unprincipled ride to the top on escalators?
I agree chaos is worse, but I don’t think that this is the best point of contrast.
In all the years I’ve followed you, PZ (and I’m talking pre-FTB), this is the most important thing you’ve ever said. Yeah, Clinton is a terrible person to vote into the White House. But she’s still the only hope we have to fix the system.
Actually we progressives voted for Hillary, not for the racist, sexist, Pope-fellatin’ gun totin’, Planned Parenthood demonzin’ indedependant from Vermont. And we’re very happy with her VP pick.
Maybe you white males who form the support base of said acist, sexist, Pope-fellatin’ gun totin’, Planned Parenthood demonzin’ indedependant from Vermont feel like you’re getting the finger, but you’re bro-gressives, not progressives.
The worst thing that ever happened to America was the American Revolution. If Britain had won we’d be more like Canada today. A parliamentary system with gobs of parties would be so sweet. If the PM screws up he resigns (hear that W?) Of course, there was still that niggling little issue of slavery in the cotton and tobacco growing states. Hard to say how that would’ve turned out. Lucky Canadians only had to worry about all of their maple syrup harvesting slaves. I hear they’re still toiling away.
@4:
LOL, Troll McTrollface.
If Bernie Sanders had the nomination locked up today, this post would be pointing out his flaws and telling all the Clintonistas to set aside their reservations, vote Sanders, and work to make a primary challenge in 2019.
I’m really tired of this attitude that your candidate is a saint and flawlessly perfect. They’re all fucked up in one regard or another, and that goes for Obama, or Sanders, or Clinton. We have to constantly criticize them all in order to make them better.
Why do you think Clinton will accentuate “a callous disregard for the billions outside our borders”?
She’s visited over 100 countries. The Global Hunger and Food Security Program happened on her watch. She helped broker peace deals in the Middle East. She’s championed women’s rights across the globe. I honestly don’t understand where the interpretation that she has a disregard for things beyond our borders comes from. And as for ” a reverence for the status quo”, sure, that’s why she was praised by conservatives in the 90s for not wanting to rock the boat on health care. What?
Same with Kaine being a “kind of blithe liberal who puts a smiling face on stasis”. He has been consistently anti-NRA in their home base state. Planned Parenthood gives him a 100% on voting. The Human Rights Campaign and Brady campaign have done the same. That’s anti-stasis, given the direction Congress has been in for years. He put his kids in public schools and is against the trends that have been happening in education.
I’m just getting really frustrated with opinions that seem to be based in some kind of vague feeling about the candidates rather than on their actual records. Feel lukewarm and annoyed about the candidates all you want, but at least ground that in what they’ve really done.
And I get really frustrated when I plainly state that we must vote for Clinton, but that isn’t enough — I must love her every policy decision. I don’t trust her on Wall Street (and Kaine even less), I don’t like her advocacy for more aggressive military action in Syria, I don’t like Kaine’s annoying Catholic spin on women’s reproductive rights.
That they have met many of my minimal expectations for a liberal candidate does not mean I have to adore them unreservedly. There is no perfect candidate (not even me, if I were running — I’d be saying you’d be mad to vote for a guy like PZ Myers).
@8:
Take a look at this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/14/1515082/-Hillary-s-Diplomacy-Revived-Latin-American-Death-Squads-Flooded-U-S-Borders-with-Refugee-Children
And in case you think the writer might be biased against HRC, he also wrote this piece defending her civil rights record:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/4/1495575/-Hillary-Clinton-in-the-Civil-Rights-Era
This country hasn’t had a liberal party since at least the 80s or 90s.
The minute the Democrats became a liberal party, the Republicans would implode.
Let’s not be hyperbolic. Bush was a disaster for 8 years, but 8 years is hardly “at least a generation.”
Admittedly, Bush’s legacy has continued, but that’s because the Democrats elected to continue it. I don’t think that’s really Bush’s fault.
I’m not sure who these people are that only vote in presidential elections. I’ve voted in every contested election but one ever since I was eligible. That includes primaries.
Right. The liberals, progressives, centrists, libertarians, and cautious conservatives need to get together and do whatever the cautious conservatives want— namely, vote for the cautious conservative candidate and move the Democrats further to the right in the process.
We’ve already tried voting for cautious conservatives in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2012. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place. Is the prospect of Trump parading around the White House so scary that you’re willing to dismantle the Democratic Party just to use the pieces to hold him off for four years? It’s not like he’ll have any real power with Congress still gridlocked.
Of the Democratic Party, yes.
Maybe I haven’t worked enough campaigns, but I doubt many people will be convinced to vote for a candidate based on the argument: “You don’t like her? Tough. You have an obligation to vote for her anyway.”
Only if she loses in November. Launching a primary challenge against an incumbent running for reelection is all but impossible.
I don’t think it would have been necessary; most of the Clintonistas seem to be Democratic brand loyalists who would have voted for any Democrat under any circumstances anyway.
I’m really tired of the false dichotomy that anyone who doesn’t pledge that they will vote for any Democrat under any circumstances must necessarily support only perfect and flawless candidates.
Yes, all candidates are fucked up in one regard or several but they’re fucked up in different ways and to wildly different degrees. Stein’s scaremongering over “GMOs” and soft support for the anti-vaxxers is offensive. Sanders’s oblivious white male privilege and soft racism are abhorrent. However, Clinton’s support for torture and imperialistic wars of aggression is a dealbreaker— a position so offensive that no candidate who holds it has any right to political office under any circumstances.
No, but it does mean you have to consider them minimally tolerable. Maybe I’m just demonstrating immature “ideological purity” but when I see 85 civilians murdered by American airstrikes in Syria, my reaction is: “That’s irredeemably evil, period,” not: “That’s evil, but necessary under the circumstances and I think the people responsible should remain in positions of power.”
If given the choice between Trump, Clinton, and Myers I’m picking Myers.
That you tell me not to vote for you even though you’re running proves you are just competent enough at governing to avert Dunning-Kruger and recognize the vast and insurmountable limits on your own competence.
That party, of course, is the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, people tend to see political parties like they see sports teams — no matter what you must cheer your own — so there’s still a lot of people voting for the completely unhinged party.
I look forward to that party dying out and being able to have a left/right conversation again, with power alternating between a centre-left party and a centre-right party.
That’s the number one priority for us all. Don’t screw it up. Don’t go flitting off to Jill Stein or Gary Johnson or some other spoiler. Hold your nose and vote for Clinton.
^This^ – but only for those of us living in swing states.
The rest of y’all, pls disregard our esteemed host’s generally sound principle, and cast your votes so that everybody – even those extremely slow learners who run our corrupt partisan duopoly – will see how much demand and need there is for something different and better.
The same applies, on a race-by-race basis, for the “downticket” offices: vote for the Dem wherever necessary/possible to stop a Repub, and otherwise show strong support for neither-of-the-above. (Hint to the Greens et alia: run more local candidates so we can do this – y’know, that grassroots local action you claim to embody.)
carlie @ # 8: Why do you think Clinton will accentuate “a callous disregard for the billions outside our borders”?
I can’t speak for our esteemed host, but for myself will reply:
Iraq. Honduras. Libya. Syria.
And all the mountains of corpses piled up by her husband in various nations, with her apparent acquiescence and collaboration.
Bob Foster@5:
“If Britain had won we’d be more like Canada today. A parliamentary system with gobs of parties would be so sweet.”
Why don’t you check some facts before you say silly things? I live in Canada and have for 72 years, and it’s nothing like you describe it.
Canada has *always* had *only* two parties able to form government throughout it’s entire history (Liberals and Conservatives with some slight name permutations such as “Progressive [!] Conservative”).
There have been a few interregnums with minority governments, but they still had one of the two major parties forming those governments. The two major parties have reorganized and changed names from time to time but that also happened in your country. Remember the whigs? Remember when the Republicans were the *liberal* party?
Furthermore in Canada when a party assumes government with a Parliamentary majority it assumes *all* government. We *never* have had a Prime minister from one party and a Parliament dominated by another party, like you commonly have in the USA. The nominal “head of state” here has *no* actual power and the Prime Minister has basically *all* the power and can do anything he (with one “she” for a few months once upon a time) likes.
The only exceptions are those short periods where the government does not command a majority in parliament.
Really, why don’t you read up on things before spouting such nonsense!
Apart from Sir David Attenborough there are no perfect saintly indviduals in the world.
He’s not running for any political office. He’s got more sense than that. Given this fact it behoves pretty much all voters to choose the lesser of two evils.
When Sir David is in charge of everything, then we can rethink our approach to politics. I’m hoping that will be soon…
I have politically liberal friends who hope that Trump wins because they think that things will then become so horrible that a Trump victory will lead to a revolution of the entire system. The majority of citizens will revolt: riots in the street, mass demonstrations, chaos on every level — and then sweeping changes forced on government by The People, who have finally Had Enough. The United States needs to be dragged into the mud because things are so awful there’s no point in even trying to fix them from within. The change must be drastic — and drastic change will not come unless the status quo is destroyed, not improved.
So they’re not voting at all. No matter how they vote, they violate their conscience.
It seems to me that this is the flip side of Far Right hysteria and tactics — and it smacks of the same mentality. It’s just about as amenable to reason, at any rate. So the Democrats lose those “liberal” votes.
PZ writes:
Democracy itself is deeply flawed; it’s only as good as the electorate, and the electorate is a swine pit full of yahoos and holy rollers and used car salesmen.
Way to victim blame, PZ. Seriously.
First off, critiques of democracy only apply to actual democracies. So the people might be responsible for everything that happens if we were able to say that their choices significantly or completely determined the outcomes. But in the US that’s not the case! There are a huge number of ways that the popular vote (i.e.: the democracy bit) is negated – first and foremost through a ‘representative’ system that, uh, doesn’t represent the popular will very much at all. I assume you’re familiar with Gilens et al’s (Princeton) study which indicates that public opinion has effectively zero impact on what congress does. In other words you’re blaming the people and democracy for having their democracy stolen. That’s without even getting into the other ways in which American democracy is stolen: the two-party system, gerrymandering, voter registration, disinfranchisement for minor crimes, and the obvious influence of money in politics.
You can’t blame the people for a democracy that has been stolen and put up for sale to the highest bidder.
Unless you’re going to say “it’s our fault for not rising up and killing these fucking bastards” Classic victim-blaming, PZ.
Sastra @ # 17: I have politically liberal friends who hope that Trump wins because they think that things will then become so horrible that a Trump victory will lead to a revolution …
Damn, some of your friends are as demented as some of mine.
At least yours are better judges of character…
More to my #18:
The “the people are swine and democracy is only as good as the electorate” argument was cooked up by Plato, who was an aristocrat who thought that a government by philosophers was the way to go. Philosophers!
And I’m sure that they are secure in their knowledge that they won’t be the ones having their lives ruined in the process. What’s a little deportation/imprisonment/forced pregnancy/state-sanctioned killing as far as they’re concerned? Just part of the sausage-making that’s a regretful consequence to those other people.
Marcus, #20,
Plato’s dislike of democratic government is well known. And his solution to it is indeed elitist, aristocratic and fanciful. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t identify a real and legitimate problem. Democracy, especially direct democracy, can be very dangerous when the demos is fearful and irrational and ill-informed or manipulated by demagogues.
Plato’s formative years were spent during the disastrous Peloponnesian War with Sparta, and he saw first-hand the problems that came with Athens’s democratic constitution and the abuses it allowed. Thucydides records them admirably in his history of the war. The people of Athens were a bloodthirsty lot, and often voted for disastrous military campaigns that weakened their state and cost many lives. Lasting peace was hard to secure when matters of national pride and ancestral vendetta got in the way, and the people of Athens often treated smaller, weaker states with contempt. Popular politicians – first the well-respected Pericles and then the despised Cleon – managed to hold on to influence with their oratory, and Thucydides says that under Pericles Athens was a democracy in name only. Pericles’ policy of holing up behind the city’s Long Walls, conceding the hinterlands of Attica and supplying the people by sea proved ruinous when the plague struck in 429BC. The fickle populace was even persuaded to recall the exiled general Alcibiades after 411BC, the man who was the architect of their most spectacular military failure in Sicily and had spent the last decade advising the Spartans and the Persians on the other side. Most galling of all to Plato, however, was the fact that the people of Athens, war-weary and frightened, turned on his master Socrates at the end of the war as a scapegoat, and sentenced him to death. For corrupting the morals of the youth. Athens’s radically democratic juries of 1500 citizens were easily swayed by the desire to punish obvious outsiders in their midst. Plato even suggests that they let a satirical lampoon of Socrates in an Aristophanes play sway their opinion of him.
Warlike policies bringing down the anger of wronged victims on society? A climate of fear giving rise to popular demagogues with disastrous plans for dealing with the situation? Outsiders in society scapegoated, demonised and painted as an existential threat to national stability? I’m sensing some similarities with a certain modern nation state here.
Plato’s solution to the problem was a typically self-serving and elitist one. But it was not the only solution. Aristotle and his successors argued for a modified constitution that mixed the best elements of democratic, oligarchic and monarchical systems as a web of checks and balances. Polybius and Cicero agreed, the latter casting the Roman model as the ideal of the Mixed Constitution, and through Renaissance Florence, 17th century England and the Federalist Papers, that solution became the basis of the US constitution and its division of powers. The structures of our modern representative democracies are premised on preventing precisely the issues that Plato was so worried about. The focus of much Enlightenment thinking in this vein also stressed education, accountability and free access to information as vital prerequisites to any kind of democratic society.
cartomancer@#22:
Democracy, especially direct democracy, can be very dangerous when the demos is fearful and irrational and ill-informed or manipulated by demagogues.
Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that that’s the case: the demos are manipulated by populares. Is that the demos failing or the populares? Should we heap scorn on the demos for falling for pretty lies, or should we reserve our scorn for the liars?
The people of Athens were a bloodthirsty lot, and often voted for disastrous military campaigns that weakened their state and cost many lives
It’s important to remember that “the people of Athens” in the case of Athenian democracy – was: about 12% of the population. It was the wealthy proto-oligarchs, in other words: the people who stood best to enrich themselves further and, most likely, stood the least chance of dying in some military adventure. Athens had it’s 12% and we have our 1%.
What we don’t have is polling data that shows what the people of Athens actually wanted. We have the words of the power elite describing what they, the power elite, wanted.
The fickle populace was even persuaded to recall the exiled general Alcibiades after 411BC, the man who was the architect of their most spectacular military failure in Sicily and had spent the last decade advising the Spartans and the Persians on the other side. Most galling of all to Plato, however, was the fact that the people of Athens, war-weary and frightened[…]
That’s an interesting juxtaposition of sentences – “fickle” on one hand and “war-weary” on the other. Could it be that they weren’t so fickle? Besides, Alcibiades, in character and public persona, could have been Trump’s progenitor. ;)
The focus of much Enlightenment thinking in this vein also stressed education, accountability and free access to information as vital prerequisites to any kind of democratic society.
Rousseau’s father (and he) were strongly influenced by discovering that the politics of Geneva were rigged by the “Little Committee” and I’m sure that had some effect on his politics regarding the necessity for openness and education. I’ve never been able to find the exact quote but Voltaire also came down hard on the side of openness: “when a government can engage in secret diplomacy it will eventually turn into a dictatorship” or something to that effect.
We cannot blame The People for Donald Trump. Not entirely, anyway. At the very minimum we need to also blame the republican party and the two party system, for setting up sort of perfect petri dish in which political bacteria like Trump could flourish and become dangerous. Given the amount of talk about how the republicans were going to try this and that to keep Trump from the nomination, we can only conclude that they’re also acknowledging that the “democratic” process they are presenting is fake.
So we have a fake nominating process, leading to a fake election in which the popular vote will be interpreted by haruspexes. Some democracy. Blame it on the people. Go ahead.
cartomancer@#22:
I say that with all respect.
#11: “It’s not like he [Trump]’ll have any real power with Congress still gridlocked.”
The fellow’s been quite clear he won’t uphold the Constitution if it ever gets in his way. And a majority of Republican legislators just spent a week demonstrating their surrender to him. And yet you’re hoping for gridlock between a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Congress to save us, something that has never, ever happened. Check.
“Let’s not be hyperbolic. Bush was a disaster for 8 years, but 8 years is hardly “at least a generation.”
Bush was bush-league compared to the possible consequences here. His long-term consequences are mostly limited to New Orleans and Iraq. But the impacts of nuclear first use (the only way he can do what he has said he is going to do about ISIS), the internment of 11 million illegals in your country, the suspension of civil rights required to “protect the police” the way he’s promised, not to mention the suspension of the free press as he’s clearly intimated at, the massive deficits in order to enrich the wealthy that are the necessary mathematical consequences of his tax plan, the collapse of the world trade order and resulting depression if the US pulls out of things like the WTO, the collapse of any restraints on Russia through the dismantling of NATO, the stacking of the courts with crony judges… I’d say a generation to recover for any one of those things would be optimistic, and he’s been quite clear in his promises to carry through with them all.
This assumes he leaves power voluntarily, of course. I’m not clear why anyone would assume that at this point, but let’s be optimistic.
cartomancer@#22:
Plato even suggests that they let a satirical lampoon of Socrates in an Aristophanes play sway their opinion of him
Plato also suggests that Socrates’ notpologia didn’t exactly make it easy for them to banish him, which they might well have done had Socrates not asked for an annuity and more or less screamed “fuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuu!” :D
Two more points about direct democracy:
1) it’s possible that Trump would not have happened without the two party system being there for him to game.
2) I, for one, would enjoy president Boaty McBoatface.
Oh, nearly forgot, 8+ more years of inaction or actual encouragement of climate change. That’s potentially generational.
I get the frustration, I do. And it’s tempting to go with the hypothesis, which is normally right, that the alarmism about Trump is just a bunch of Democrats saying, whoa, this one’s close, gotta amp up the demonization rhetoric about Trump. I’m just asking people to consider the alternate hypothesis, that this time, just once, the Wolf really is at the door, and that the alarm of informed people at Trump’s statements and the likely political climate he would inherit is genuine.
Best case is nothing really bad happens, and Trump is just as bad as Clinton would have been. Let’s concede the upper limit, and say more of the same is the best we can hope for. But what’s the lower limit on the losses we could all take? If the status quo is a 5 out of 10 on the scale of worseness, with 10 being the worst you can imagine and 1 being the world the way you would design it, let’s assess the outcomes on a Hillary bet are the next few years stay in the 4-6 range. But Trump? He’s not going to produce a better result than Hillary would, so let’s say he’s a 4 on the upper end, too. What’s the lower end? I think people are too cynical about politics and wonks now to see that all the signs say the lower end on outcomes here really would be off-the-scale bad.
Here’s another hypothesis for the uncommitted to consider. Let’s say there really was a really off-the-scales dangerous guy running for president. Imagine your Dr. Evil/Evil Santa hybrid however you like. So decide for yourself, how would his campaign differ from what we’re seeing? Realistically, what markers would you use to discern the difference? Test against the hypothesis, offer proof that he’s not doing what your evil hypothetical candidate would do. Cause that’s what I’m looking for and there’s not enough of it to be found for any level of confidence in a Republican-win outcome.
@Marcus Ranum:
I am reminded me of how Athens dealt with Mytilene, first condemning the entire male population to death, then sending another ship with a countermanding order after the one sent to carry out the massacre order.
Allow me to explain why I have come to believe this is far better than the morass that is the American political system. I’m an ex-pat Brit, so I have lived under both types of system.
In Canada and the UK, when parties set out their platform (manifesto) before an election, they are the most important documents in the election campaign. They lay out a detailed road map for what the next government will do should that party win the election. Once the election is over, the winning party actually has the power and ability to act on its promises, and conduct its business as laid out in their manifesto. Furthermore, the government can actually be measured on the results of those policy decisions, and the original promises they made, come the next election. No excuses. And if something has gone badly wrong, the next government actually has the power to correct it. Of course, it’s never as clear cut in practice, but by and large, that’s how the system works.
Contrast that with what’s been happening in the US these past 20 years. People rightly scoff at party platforms in the US. They are among the least important documents in the US election, and everyone knows that if even 5% of the platform is enacted, that would be a major surprise. Legislation has to pass two legislative bodies and the presidential desk before it becomes law, and even when all three are controlled by the same party, personal and special interests dictate that every bill is tweaked with favors and laden with pork until it is barely recognizable compared with the original intent. It’s almost impossible to measure a party by their performance these days because it’s almost impossible to get anything done, and likewise, it’s almost impossible to get anything undone.
Of course, in the case of the Republicans wanting to abolish Obamacare, you might say that was a good thing, but the simple fact is that if the US had a parliamentary-style system, it is very likely we would have had a robust national healthcare system in place years ago. Yes, some very bad ideas would make it into law, but those very bad ideas can also be far more easily repealed. And note, repealing good, popular ideas (like the NHS in the UK) is still not that easy. Overall, while other countries are moving ahead (in fits and starts, but democracy is never pretty) the US is stuck in a quagmire of its own making.
I know this is an academic debate, since the US isn’t going to switch to a parliamentary system, but it’s an important contrast to make nonetheless.
Unfortunately, it’s natural to look for the easy solution. When Jill Stein revealed she had offered to work with Bernie Sanders, perhaps even on a joint ticket, the comment section was filled with Bernie fans practically swooning over the idea of a Sanders/Stein ticket sweeping to power in the ultimate outsider election coup, and they certainly didn’t like being told they were being completely and utterly unrealistic.
But as unrealistic as it is, the sentiment is understandable. It’s the same sentiment that drives many on the far-right to believe that the only solution is armed revolt, again, ignoring the fact that even if they somehow manage to win, it would likely cause millions of casualties, destroy the US economy for a generation, and it would be very unlikely the new government was any better than the old one.
Change from the bottom up is the only solution, but it’s hard. Very hard. There is no quick fix. The real heroes are the millions of Americans who spend years toiling to make some small improvement in the way government runs things, often in the face of personal tragedy, and they rare garner any more than local recognition for their efforts, if that.
One thing that Clinton faces which might make her presidency more palatable to the 99% is the difficulty she faces winning a fourth consecutive Democratic term in the White House. She knows that if she has not had a successful first term, the odds of her winning re-election are virtually nil, assuming the Republicans run a half-decent candidate against her, of course.
tacitus@#32:
… which means they’ll do everything they can to sabotage her. I’m not sure if they can invent anything new that they haven’t already tried on Obama, though.
Owlmirror@#29:
I am reminded me of how Athens dealt with Mytilene
I just read that and all I could think was “who was it who was saying that democracies don’t engage in wars of aggression?” Sounds like being one of Athens’ “allies” was slightly better than being a foe.
I am getting the impression from the way these discussions go that there is this idea the our democracy is degenerating to a new low. It is repeated that the rich and powerful have taken over and are subverting democracy and the system is now broken.
I would like to know if this is true then could someone please tell me when was it when it was not broken and flawed. Was there some country some where at some time that was more open that was better ruled by it’s population?
The strength of democracy rests with the people.
What I constantly hear from all sides is this desire for a great leader, with vision and honesty and strength to lead us and in a sense to do it for us. “I will lead you” ” I know what you want”, Our leader is the best yours is deeply flawed. We do not want to be that engaged nor involved in doing democracy all the time we have other priorities that are more important to us most of the time.
Just when is it ever going to be like history or theory where things are simplified and reduced because I don’t see it.
We are here and now, none of us are supper geniuses that can predict the future.
uncle frogy
This. *So* much this.
Thanks PZ.
Uh, also, the US is not alone. Pretty much every other Western democracy has exactly the same problem.
I’m changing the theme song to we are the worst ancestors ever.
I’m also dropping out of caring about politics until I do have time, which will probably basically be once I become an existent success. Hopefully that’ll be before the world plunges into infinite disaster/I die.
Marcus, #23
Should we reserve our scorn for the lying manipulators? Is it a failing of the demos that they are prone to being manipulated?
I don’t think this is a question of scorn or condemnation. I don’t think it helps to phrase it in terms of culpability and blame. The pragmatic fact of the situation is that the demos can be manipulated and there are people willing and able to do that for their own ends. So how do you fix that? It would be nice if there were some way to stop people wanting to manipulate others, but a cure for human selfishness is not really on the horizon. You’ve got to create safeguards such that the people are less easy to manipulate, or take the decision-making away from them to some degree. Both of which are things that our modern representative democracies have tried to do.
The voting population of Athens was only about 12%. The “wealthy proto-oligarchs”. Those who stood to enrich themselves further and stood the least chance of dying in military ventures.
It is true that the citizen body of Classical Athens was restricted to adult males born of citizen parents (initially just a citizen father, after Pericles’ citizenship law of the 440s both a citizen father and a citizen-class mother), but it is going altogether too far to presume that this group was uniformly wealthy and influential. The restrictions on citizenship were put in place to prevent the land of Attica being owned by anyone outside its traditional native population, and the majority of citizens were small subsistence farmers. The thinking of the time was that only people who own the land of the state have a stake in how it turns out – if you have no land then if the state is ravaged you can relocate somewhere else and set up shop again with no loss of livelihood. Athens was full of non-citizen merchants (metics), more so than any other Greek city of the time (Corinth perhaps came close), and the strict citizenship requirement was enforced to prevent mixing of the two classes. Metics often made a lot of money from their commercial enterprises, which is why they flocked to the city despite being more heavily taxed than citizens. Both metics and citizens were equally eligible for Athens’s compulsory military service, and served according to their wealth class (the poorest were rowers in the fleet, those in the next category fought as hoplites, those above as cavalry). It is true that the generals, who could enrich themselves most from military adventuring, were all citizens, but they formed a tiny clique within the citizen body, and your average citizen suffered just as much as your average metic in war. Ironically the one group who were not required to fight in Athens were its slaves – military service and citizenship went hand in hand. Some slaves were also very wealthy. Banking was considered a slave profession in Athens, and we have the will of one very rich ex-slave banker called Pasion, who left his banking concerns to his own slaves rather than his now freeborn son. Records we have of wages in Athens (primarily the accounts of the Parthenon workers) show that it was common practise to pay citizen, metic or slave workers the same amount for the same work. The “Old Oligarch”, a disgruntled 440s anti-democracy writer whose pamphlet came down to us as a spurious work of Xenophon, voices a common complaint that in Athens you couldn’t tell citizens from metics from slaves just by looking at them. Athens did have its aspiring oligarchs, but they were the scions of the old aristocratic noble families and their social position gave them no official advantage over their rivals. In practice, of course, it was they who had the wealth and free time and connections to keep on top of politics, learn the skills of public speaking and become the manipulative rhetores we were talking about. Your average potter from the Kerameikos or olive farmer from cape Sounion or docker in the Piraeus had no such route to influence over and above his peers. To put it another way, the Athenians also had their 1% who called the shots, and the remainder of the citizen body were precious little above the unfranchised in terms of actual power.
We don’t have polling data on what these average Athenian citizens wanted in the modern sense, it’s true. But we do have historians’ reports of some of the policies they actually voted to enact and a sense of the kinds of speeches made to appeal to them. We also have their literature and popular plays and art, and by modern standards it is very bloodthirsty indeed. Pretty much everyone in Classical Greece and the entire ancient world was bloodthirsty by our standards. Warfare was seen as a legitimate means of enriching the state and those within it.
I’m not sure that fickle and war-weary are necessarily opposed. I would say that war-weariness and the climate of fear and tension made the Athenian people fickle (someone has already mentioned Mitylene, a classic example), just as the climate of fear fostered in the UK over the summer led to our Brexit vote and the climate of fear and tension in the US is feeding the Trump phenomenon. Does this mean populations are naturally and intrinsically fickle? No, but under strained circumstances they very much can become fickle and willing to listen to opinions they might otherwise have ignored or laughed off. We are not talking about individuals here, who may well in and of themselves be perfectly rational, considered and aware, we are talking about the social dynamics of whole populations coming to grips with issues – often in very short spaces of time. Perhaps “fickle” is a bit loaded and negative, and perhaps doggedly sticking to the same policies whatever happens would have been even worse, but populations do have the capacity to make terrible and ill-considered decisions, and what makes them do so is generally different from what makes small cliques of self-interested oligarchs or tyrants make terrible decisions. Which is more of a threat can be argued, but if you are running a democracy then it’s the flaws in communal decision-making across whole populations that you really need to be interested in.
Though if, as you say, the “democratic” element in US politics is merely smoke and mirrors, and the oligarchs do in fact run the show, it would be better to study the problems of oligarchy and how they can be ameliorated. Aristotle believed that democracies tend to devolve into oligarchies anyway, when democracy becomes corrupt and unworkable, although he tended to see that as a good thing as he envisioned enlightened oligarchs taking over from corrupt demagogues and the mob, rather than even more corrupt oligarchs posing as those demagogues and using the mob to distract from his problems.
As for Trump being a latterday Alcibiades, I can’t say the resemblance is a good one. Alcibiades was actually a highly competent military strategist, part of Socrates’ circle of bright young intellectuals, well respected by much of the Athenian elite and both highly expansionist and highly pragmatic in his foreign policy outlook.
If Trump resembles anyone from the golden age of Athenian democracy then it would probably be Cleon – the loudmouthed, hectoring champion of the commercial classes whose platform was rabidly anti-spartan, anti-establishment and anti-intellectual. He was also responsible for a string of failed lawsuits. Though we do have to be careful, as the disgruntled targets of two of those lawsuits – Thucydides and Aristophanes – are also the ones who tell us pretty much all we know about the man.
I like this post.
Hm. In this case, I’m not sure the decision was so political. Sure, they likely focus-grouped it to death, but it also appears that Clinton genuinely likes Kaine and thinks he’s someone she can work alongside. I watched the joint rally yesterday, and I haven’t seen her so happy and relaxed ever. She seemed overjoyed.
cartomancer@#38:
Thank you for the thoughtful and educational commentary. As you can see I’m only semi-literate about Greek history.
populations do have the capacity to make terrible and ill-considered decisions, and what makes them do so is generally different from what makes small cliques of self-interested oligarchs or tyrants make terrible decisions
I was going to attempt a snappy comeback along the lines that “oligarchs and tyrants don’t make such great decisions, either!” but you headed me off at the hot gates. The obvious counter argument to the foolishness of the people is the foolishness of the leaders. I have never understood why it’s taken as given that leaders are going to magically do a better job of leading than, say, the lady next door who has managed her extended family through good times and bad, and can tell a reliable used car from a lemon. In their mind’s eye and perhaps their bathroom mirrors leaders see Caesar come again, but they’re just as likely to be Napoleon III. There’s fickleness to go around – our leaders choose themselves from a pool based not on experience, past success, and wisdom – but by who has better access to power and can bring scandal down on the others.
TL;DR: if the foolishness of the demos is reason to reject democracy, the foolishness of the leaders is reason to reject every form of political system that has leaders.
cartomancer@#39:
I was thinking of Alcibiades’ flamboyance, certainly not his appearance or competence. Though Trump may not be a successful leader or commander, he’s a very skillful con-artist, which means he’s a great success in his chosen field.
I’m pretty amazed that anyone can look at Trump and think “great leader” or even “gets things done” unless as Clinton’s scriptwriters said, it’s writing books that end at Chapter 11.
As a guy that liked both of them because they’re not that far apart, this season has been killing me.
#35: unclefrogy
I agree that it’s tough to find a time and place where any democratic system hummed along nicely without some major flaw rearing its ugly head, but when you look at wealth distribution in America, the numbers clearly show that, in terms of economic policy, it hasn’t been quite this bad in some time.
Corporate innovation hasn’t just been limited to product development or marketing strategies, they have been devising newer and better ways to game the political system, and to leverage their power to their fullest extent in the halls of Washington and state capitals around the nation.
Some of the multinational corporate tax schemes are so complex that enforcement agencies in several countries have said they are simply not equipped to figure out what’s going on, let alone ensure compliance.
That has to change, but unfortunately, the speed of democratic change is much slower (especially in the US, and that’s even if the political will is there) than the corporations’ ability change strategies and subvert any attempt to rein them in.
It’s not all doom and gloom — gay marriage finally arrived in the US, the UK prime minister promised referendums on Scottish Independence and Brexit, and made good on those promises, and even resigned when the second vote didn’t go his way. I think the Brexit vote was a bad decision, but you can’t deny that the people voted and the political consequences for those at the top were swift and decisive.
But yeah, when it comes to economics, democracy has been delivering less and less in many places, and it’s likely to get worse. A nation’s economic health currently depends on economic growth, which means an expanding economy, which typically means a growing population. But the world’s population cannot grow forever, and sooner or later, the world is going to have to find a new way to generate prosperity without plundering the world’s natural resources and depending on a growing population.
@44
I was thinking along those lines at the same time remembering what things were like in the period between The Civil War and WWI.
The top might not have been as high as now but the functional low was certainly lower. Power was as now vested in the upper levels of society who certainly got the sweeter deal. It is also true that there has been significant progress on many fronts none were the result of magnanimity on “our rulers” but have been hard fought and the struggle will continue sometimes easy some times very difficult.
I think one the genius things about the US constitution is that it set up a government that would tend to become hobbled making it a little harder to have truly bad minority or majority ideas enacted into bad practice and bad policy it needs some form of general consensus. It makes it a little harder but history shows clearly not impossible.
uncle frogy
At risk of being a wild eyed crazy optimist and receiving well earned scorn from the horde, I’d like to point out that Roosevelt ran his first campaign as a conservative. He red baited Hoover for daring to propose increasing taxes on the rich. He made few or no specific proposals. His efforts in New York to combat the Depression were conservative. A reasonable person looking at his 1932 campaign might well have concluded that he was a conservative who would never solve the problems he was presented with.
Clinton probably won’t be an FDR. But she might be. Trump certainly won’t be.
“I swear, one of the worst things about the American system of democracy is the way we treat the trivial act of pulling a lever as the be-all and end-all of citizen involvement in politics,”
No. The worst thing about the American system of democracy is a campaign cycle of at least 24 months every damn time. It’s an enormous waste of time and energy.
Your neighbors to the north have just 8 weeks, and it works just fine. You should try it. Saves money and sanity…
From what I can tell there are plenty of people on the left who don’t see a substantive difference between Trump and Clinton.
In the short term, Trump may be worse, but Clinton’s continuation of the same policies which have been slowly eroding democracy in the US for decades is just as lethal in the end. It’s like being asked to choose the method of your execution. Plague or immolation.
I don’t tend to agree, given that Clinton will probably lead to future elections and allow time for grassroots efforts to push back against the corporate ownership of the government. Eight years of Trump would kill a lot of people at the bottom of US society, my friends included.
However, when people see the two as equally terrible, telling them they have to hold their noses and vote for the one you prefer seems very insulting. It’s not going to convince anyone. I’ve avoided telling and gone straight to begging. Anyone in a swing state thinking of doing anything other than supporting Clinton please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t.
Ah, I missed this post when it went up.
Yet another champion of the Underpants Gnomes theory, I see:
Phase 1: Elect a warmonger who is in the pocket of Wall Street.
Phase 2: ?????
Phase 3: Progressive legislation!
My prediction, FWIW: The one thing we will not get is 8 years of Trump. The first thing Trump will do is crash the economy. That will result in either him getting booted in the next election and/or resigning sooner because this presidenting stuff is haaarrrdd!!! or him declaring a state of emergency, calling off the election, and eventually declaring himself president for life. I find a scenario in which he wins re-election and then leaves after 8 years almost impossible to imagine. I suppose he might drop dead 8 years into his term as pres for life.
That said, even the best case scenario, it’s not just people at the bottom of society that he’s going to kill. It’s everyone, even the wealthiest. The problem is this: The last few years have seen astonishing medical breakthroughs occur. I know those in oncology the best, but from what I can tell, there has been amazing, unprecedented progress elsewhere as well. This progress is largely the result of the Clinton increase in funding of the NIH in the 1990s. That funding dried up under Bush, but drug companies took the basic research results of the NIH and used them to create new drugs that are, well, I won’t say kicking cancer’s butt yet, but actually managing to at least bite its ankles. In a few years, when we actually know how to use these drugs, we may be up to kicking its shins*. If cancer is controlled, we can start working seriously on aging. Aging is, to some extent, what the body does to prevent cancers from occurring. Make cancer a non-problem and a lot of proteins that cause aging (and prevent cancer) suddenly become drugable targets.
All this would stop under Trump. Obviously, Trump would underfund the NIH. Furthermore, the funding he did provide would be skewed towards whatever attracted his attention, which would not be the undramatic basic research that leads to real progress. At the same time, he’d underfund or possibly eliminate the FDA. If he underfunds it, that slows down drug development because there’s just not enough people to evaluate and clear drugs quickly. If he eliminates it, he eliminates the drug companies’ motivation to make safe and effective drugs and we’re back to 19th century style patent medicines. Finally, as I mentioned above, he would almost certainly crash the economy, as in making the depression look like not such a big thing level crash. And that would crash the world economy. Not much scientific research can be done when there’s no economy to support it.
So when I say that a Trump presidency will kill all of us, I mean it. And that’s assuming the very best of him. I’m completely leaving out the possibility that he starts a nuclear war, but it’s not off the table either.
*This is for cancer in general. Some specific cancers are either routinely curable or controllable to the point that they’re simply not a problem. Really. Challenge me and I’ll provide references.