TomDispatch: What Have We Done to Democracy?

[marmar]

What Have We Done to Democracy?
Of Nearsighted Progress, Feral Howls, Consensus, Chaos, and a New Cold War in Kashmir

By Arundhati Roy


While we're still arguing about whether there's life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By "democracy" I don't mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.

So, is there life after democracy?

Attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of different systems of governance, and end with a somewhat prickly, combative defense of democracy. It's flawed, we say. It isn't perfect, but it's better than everything else that's on offer. Inevitably, someone in the room will say: "Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia... is that what you would prefer?"

Whether democracy should be the utopia that all "developing" societies aspire to is a separate question altogether. (I think it should. The early, idealistic phase can be quite heady.) The question about life after democracy is addressed to those of us who already live in democracies, or in countries that pretend to be democracies. It isn't meant to suggest that we lapse into older, discredited models of totalitarian or authoritarian governance. It's meant to suggest that the system of representative democracy -- too much representation, too little democracy -- needs some structural adjustment.

The question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit? ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175119/arundhati_roy_is_democracy_melting_ (scroll down after clicking the link)

[tblue]

1. I love Arundhati Roy. Just heard her today on Democracy Now.

She's so brilliant.

Democracy is often used as the veneer that masks unspeakable horrors. The people 'voted' so what's perpetrated by the 'elected' government is an expression of the will of the people. BS!

Just because you achieve a system that was created based on moral or ethical ideals doesn't mean those ideals necessarily continue to exist within that system. Democracy should be a means to an end, and not the end itself.

[Demeter]

2. It's Dead, Jim n/t