DEMOCRACY—WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
The thing about democracy is, it isn’t a thing.
And we can never really have it.
The very wonders that are in the definition are not achievable. They are goals.
It’s a process, that never actually becomes a thing, even
itself.
We aspire to it, or not.
And we are heading toward it, or not. We try for it, aim for it. Yet ultimately fail.
But that fail is still trending toward it or away.
Its an arc, with a long, mostly gentle, incline. Then it gets to whatever height it gets to, and starts to devolve, descend.
Gently, or not.
When I hear politicos say they want to “bring democracy”
somewhere, like dessert to a dinner party, I cringe. Do we have it to give?
Anyone can look at our nation and see that, as a bastion of
democracy, we suck. The hubris involved in thinking we can create it elsewhere
would alone be enough to guarantee our failure, if hubris caused failure any
more. (In Greek tragedy hubris meant excessive pride
toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis. And that certainly seems to
be where we are headed today. To nemesis. In fact, we may have met nemesis
already—Trump.)
As the Greeks before
them, the founding fathers (you notice no mothers, let alone LGBTQ) required a
certain level of education and property ownership for citizenship. Skin in the
game, in other words. And the ability to comprehend and VALUE the structures
and systems that support democracy. or at least them.
BUT TO ANSWER THE QUESTION, democracy is something, however unachievable. We try to move toward equal value for every life, equal opportunity for every child. We do this by understanding what creates these equalities.
We have a long way to go, but...
IT'S NOT TRUE THAT ITS GOOD FOR ABSOLUTELY NUTHIN'.
