The freest bestest Western Countries suffer from the same fate of being locked into this façade of a democracy, having no meaningful choice and barring outright revolution, no avenue for change. These states stand as a warning to us as to what democracies can devolve into.
Modern day society takes a lot of pleasure and pride in talking about democracy. It maintains its pride by distinguishing its current situation with the undemocratic past. Being undemocratic is frowned upon privately and publicly. Political parties dread being called undemocratic and dictatorial while throwing that very allegation against other parties. The worth of a palace is adjudged atleast partially on their reputation of allowing different voices to be heard, meaning thereby, on the basis of how democratic they are. We and the society we live in, love democracy. I will here concede that democracy is the worst working solution we have to governing large bodies of people and therefore I am a democrat. I do not endorse or desire an undemocratic system. But we have to seriously ponder what democracy as a concept entails? At its heart, it entails meaningful choice. What this means, in an ideal scenario, is that you are offered a buffet of political dishes and you then have to choose which suits you best. Hopefully your preference is shared by others which will allow your choice to operate as the nation’s choice. There are two massive assumptions here.
Firstly, that we are capable of making such decisions and secondly that it shall always be true that different political parties offering different political dishes will exist in a democracy. The falsity of both these assumptions has been proved in the case of United Kingdom and California. In the state of California, which is the richest state by far of all of the states of USA, you have people who do not have electricity, sky rocketing housing prices, an economy that is hostile to small business, homeless encampments, rising crime, drug overdoses, massive and orchestrated thefts from supermarkets, dysfunctional public amenities among a host of other issues. What do you think happened to the leader of this once great state that presided over this suicide of a state? Nothing. The voters voted him back to power. And I shall remind you that this California (comparable to Kerala here), whose people take massive pride in their ‘literacy’, ‘progressive beliefs’ and their ‘forward looking’ nature. If the most ‘educated’ (as commonly measured) are capable of being wilfully blind, then pray tell me why do we retain this belief in the ability of populations to choose well?
Before calling me undemocratic, know that the left levels the very same allegation when things do not go their way, they just beat around the bush and state that the population was propagandized into being stupid rather than actually being stupid (they do state the latter as well behind closed doors). Let us come to United Kingdom now where the people have no political choice whatsoever. In name they are a multiparty democracy. In name they have different political parties that wish to implement different policies. In practice they live under a policy dictatorship. Regardless of who comes to power, the same policies are implemented. Immigration will be encouraged with Labour or Conservatives in power. The state shall go on increasing in size regardless of Labour or Conservatives being in power. No national discussion will be held on racism or lack thereof in the UK, regardless of Labour or Conservatives in power. Universities shall remain completely unified in adhering to their Leftwing orthodoxy, with or without the parties in power. Manufacturing has not been revived. Bankers continuously strengthen their grip. Heck, even the fishermen in the UK do not get to decide where and what they can fish and this has remained unchanged despite multiple changes in the ruling dispensation. Circling back to the title of this article. The people of California and United Kingdom live in de jure democracies.
They do not exercise any real choice, the former due to collective idiocy and the latter due to lack of political choice. The freest bestest Western Countries suffer from the same fate of being locked into this façade of a democracy, having no meaningful choice and barring outright revolution, no avenue for change. These states stand as a warning to us as to what democracies can devolve into. Hopefully we as a society can identify the rot before it turns our democracy into a carcass as well.
