What is democracy?

[Dobby]

Oh, democracy is without a doubt very far removed from the common folk. How many people are actually in contact with the representative that is meant to represent them? And how possibly can this one representative fully take on board the opinions and wishes of the thousands of people they are meant to represent and then help to produce a coherent policy outcome with hundreds of other representatives who also each represent thousands of people? The opinions and wishes of our one individual are going to be incredibly insignificant to any policy outcome. This is perhaps one of the reasons for falling voter turnout across the western world (amongst numerous others, this was the subject of my dissertation thesis).

I think that by localising certain policy decisions these problems could be overcome. Here in Britain (I'm guessing there is something similar in the US) we have local councils with elected local councillors that represent a few hundred people and they make decisions on local issues with other councillors. But while better, representing even say 50 people would be quite challenging. And these elections still suffer from the point I made in my first post that they can be elected with say only 30% of the vote.

Personally I think many local issues could be localised even further and could be decided by direct democracy through referendums etc. As you mention parks etc would be included in this. Ideally all issues would be solved this way, but at the national level this is nowhere near possible. I do however think that proportional representation would be a fairer way of electing representatives at the national level and this I believe (various countries using PR instead of FPTP can be used as an example) would help increase voter turnout, although it wouldn't completely overcome the problem.

[Indy]

Where it goes to hell is that special interests have usurped the "representative" part, both locally and nationally.

Nationally was a given but The Daily Show had an unintentionally chilling piece the other night about how the Koch Bros. super-PAC was now getting involved in hyper-local races, pouring money into funding the extreme, "tea party" candidates or in this instance, a candidate who was simply Republican and didn't want their help. He couldn't stop them, though, and they sent out mailers on his behalf engaging in the kind of sleazy, bottom-feeding slime that we're all too used to.

The irony being: the candidate lost and he didn't want their help, told them he didn't and he wish they have never come along.

Mind you, the other chilling part is that neither of the Koch Bros. live in this town nor even the state so you basically have plutocratic barons using their money to influence not just national elections but local ones thousands of miles away in towns where they don't even live.

Which I guess on the ladder of evil is the next step, because they've already destroyed our national gov't so destroying the local ones would clearly be the next move.

Once we decided that corporations were people too we sank the actual people, because actual people will never have the money or influence that corporations do. Money for the obvious reason and influence in that not only do they now control the gov't, they control the media, which is the only tool the people have to monitor the gov't.

Instead the media continually offers us the blue pill, so we can be blissfully unaware of how we're being enslaved as long as we get to own guns and are fighting about Coke commercials.

[Stratego]

Political legitimacy is about managing the perceived fairness in the distribution of power. Democracies are societies where legitimacy is equated with more even distribution of power. It's not about the system in place.

[broken robot]

[broken robot]

[Indy]

You can't do anything until the people are engaged and in this country the people have completely disengaged, as they believe politics is merely a sport where you are to pick one team and back them without question, like it is the Super Bowl.

The money is the problem but here we have a movement that, incredibly, has declared that money is "free speech" and any restrictions on it are attacks on the First Amendment.

Yes it is just that retarded.

[gla22]

[broken robot]

[Kane]

1) The US is a Constitutional Federal Republic. Not a democracy.

2) Democracy is an overused term that simply infers, in modern parlance, that a more just and equitable means of representation is utilized via popular vote. What that adheres to depends on the nation in question. We elect representatives utilizing a democratic means but it is still governed in a Federal sense with respect to the states and the lower levels of political representation therein.

3) Democracy is not in decline, those that seek to utilize it are. Those that care the most about politics are those most willing to do whatever they have to, using whatever means available, to "win." Those that stand to suffer under this system are now the people so apathetic that they neither wish to vote or educate themselves on the issues. There are countless reasons out there up to and including that they simply lack the time and the means, even in this age of technology, because they are trying to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

Democracy and its efficacy rests on a strong middle class. The middle class is clearly in decline and with it the people with the power to push for equity. For Justice. For reform. As the middle withers and the divide grows stronger our middle ground is lost and participants no longer feel that democracy holds any legitimacy for them anymore. And at that point is very well might as it has likely been corrupted in the decline. And then we get violence. Upheaval.

It's a short post on something that could go for pages and pages. It's not perfect. It's a bit sad. But it's the f**k truth. Democracy, like everything else in this world, is what you and those around you make of it.