"POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage."
- Ambrose Bierce : The Devil's Dictionary
"The BrainTrust is a Dictatorship, masquerading as a Democracy..."
- The Janitor, in Scrubs, Season 7 (I don't remember the Episode name or number)
Should we, therefore, trust the voter's capability of criticism and abstraction of the complex Democratic process ? can anyone become a leader, a "guard of the constitution" in the image of a US president ? I doubt it. But what makes me optimistic about the fate of Democracy is the concern of any evolved politic system : preserve the people, every individual of the people, and the interests of the people. Any authority, who ignore this very goal is not Democratic, and that's the final third foundation brick of Democracy : "Preserving the citizen's interest, with no deffrenciation due to some ethnic, religious or harmless intellectual or peronal set of convictions."
"A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress." That's how Herbert Marcuse starts his first chapter of his brilliant essay "One-Dimensional Man". This "Democratic Unfreedom" is covered, ignored and forgotten with the simple use of WWES [see the two previous articles in my blog and especially Part1] : We have Democracy, there is no descrimination. I am sorry, the simple existence of the naïve democracy does not and cannot ensure the exclusion of Descrimination. The intellectual war against "Naïve Democracy" is an obligation. This is what Noam Chomsky has underlined : "It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies." [see "A Special Supplement : The Responsibility of Intellectuals" by Noam Chomsky, The New York Review of Books, Volume 8, Number 3, February 23, 1967]
Take a look at this brave, brilliant paragraph that I found when searching "Democracy" in the great fortune teller of my Linux Operating System :
Democracy, n.:
A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932), since withdrawn.
I think that the main tool to fight such a terrible state of anarchy is the responsibility of those who write, photograph, speak and express themselves publicly. Individualist thinkers are always superior to conformist thinkers, at least for me. Challenging the common views and dogmas is the sacred task of the independent thinker. A kind of Social "Hacker" (as in the cyber world) is needed. If there is an act of real, greek courage today, it should be this challenge. Let the elitist mind speak loud.
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