Why it's going to be hard to rebuld the United States that was

[pecunium]

Democracy is hard. It is, in fact, probably the hardest system of goverment people have tried.

It is fundamentally unstable. Get a large enough group together, and it will fail, because it becomes too unwieldy (the estimates of largest stable size which come to me are about 5,000 people; for direct, one person: one vote, on all decisions of note). Too many people, and too much lag time in the making of decisions, as well as the ablity for a demagogue to sway a majority, and so oppress a large enough minority that things fall apart.

We get around this, in the modern age of large states, but having a system which puts my vote in the hand of another, who is holding a number of other proxies. This has flaws too, because the population can get so large that either the number of proxies is guaranteed to make it impossible to satisfy the constiuency, or the number of delgates to the "thing" will become too large to get business done.

But, so long as some criteria are met, these are both survivable.

But, right now, according to this poll of Rightwing bloggers, it seems we're screwed.

First, the good news. This is a small, and non-random poll of self-responders, so it's not likely to be really accurate.

If it is, the one of the fundamental requirements of democracy is in grave danger.

Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)-- 84%
No (10) -- 16%

That's a terrifying ratio.

Because the primary belief required of the citizens of a democracy is that the general interest of all is pointed in the same direction. That those in political opposition aren't evil, merely mistaken, at worst misguided. It's why democracies value a level of homogeniety; why the myth of the melting pot is so strong in the United States.

When a significant part of the population believes the rest aren't looking out for common interests... the system is in trouble. If the belief gets to be too large, if too many of the minority come to this way of thinking, that state is doomed.

A smaller number, will leave. A larger number will foment discontent. In some cases they will rebel. The U.S. did this to create itself. Later it had several rebellions testing just what the social contracts were (Shay's and The Whiskey Rebellions, as well as the Civil War).

The things these bloggers believe isn't that the "Democrats" think the war is lost, fruitless, a waste of blood, treasure and stature in the world; no, they think the "Liberals" want us to lose, and so lose place in the world and become a lesser power.

They don't believe this is because of a difference of opinion, or understanding... they think it is being done, just to gain political power, and lord it over them.

That's a problem, even if they are just a small segment of the Republican Party it's a problem, because these are the people who have the pulpit. They weren't chosen at random, they were chosen because they have fame. They are shapers of seconday opinion and this is a corrosive idea.

If this is what they believe, they are likely to poison the well, and make a happy medium impossible, which will further the spread of this way of thinking, and so the cycle will continue, until the strain is more than can be borne, and the United States could pass from the stage.

Comments

[firepower.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely spot-on. I still think it's going to become a truism that the real enemies are within.

People who think that the administration started this war to turn on the cash spigots to CACI and Halliburton...I don't really have a rejoinder to that. And I don't really have a rejoinder to the notion that Democrats are nothing more than bellwethers of public opinion, espousing whatever they think will propel them into power, up to and including stopping the war in Iraq.

I weirdly see more value in both of these propositions than in the ideas that we're in Iraq for "the long term," because we're not, or to "support the troops," because we don't, or that we're there to "give them democracy," because that wasn't the reason either. Wishful thinking doesn't change the fact that we went on this adventure because we wanted a vision of national unity without having to engage the real and worsening problems of everyday Americans' lives. I see both extremes as presenting valid views...and moderate assertions about the war as invalid, boring, selectively blind, opportunistic, avaricious and cowardly.

There are great reasons to tear this country apart coming from both ends of the spectrum, and little but cynicism from the center.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

You wrote:

When a significant part of the population believes the rest aren't looking out for common interests... the system is in trouble. If the belief gets to be too large, if too many of the minority come to this way of thinking, that state is doomed.

I am seeing that in the reaction to the lack of federal response to the Feb. 24 tornado in Dumas Arkansas. FEMA has been slow to non-responsive in helping this city get back on its feet, and our congressional delegation thinks that the problem might be political- our state 'flipped' Democrat this past election. I heard it not only from the state House member, but also from our senators, the governor, and the congressmen. FEMA basically told us that we're on our own, citing out state's budget surplus as the main reason that they won't help out financially. OTOH, they rushed to help out the tornado victims in Georgia and Alabama- both Republican strongholds. It's gotten really ugly.

The well is being poisoned even as we speak. Between things like this and the onslaught of the theocratic right into government, I don't see a bright future for this country. It isn't a 'liberal' thing at all- it's religious.

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

See the differences between Katrina/Rita recovery in MS and TX vs. LA as well. MS and TX are GOP-governed red states and LA, while mostly reddish, has a Dem governor. I don't think this is a coincidence.

Add to that Domenici's interference in ongoing investigations and so on, the Plamegate ordeal, widespread meddling in elections in Ohio and elsewhere....but frankly, the well was poisoned long ago. You can see signs of this in the GOP's constant gunning for Bill Clinton and back further than that to Watergate, maybe even earlier. I really think Watergate was when people stopped believing anyone was in national politics for anything other than self-aggrandizement and greed.

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

Even believing they're in it for greed does allow a peaceful median. If the decisions at hand aren't too important to the people they are decided for, if the assumption exists that the profit motive *can be manipulated*. And that there is time.

The problem is when each side has found a way of pointing at every other side and saying "see? they're destroying us!" and making it believeable. The problem, then, is: What if some of them are right. When the question is where to go, not how to go there, and the answers differ so deeply that 4 years is a lifetime rather than a drop in the bucket...

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah- that has been discussed also. Not only in the hallways of my state capitol, but on the news and in local blogs. They don't think this is a coincidence, either.

I think that it might be high time to start putting together a hexagram 36 continuity kit: gather technical data, build the library, hunker down and lay low.

"Darkening of the Light. In adversity It furthers one to be persevering." "The light has sunk into the earth: The image of Darkening of the Light. Thus does the superior man live with the great mass: He veils his light, yet still shines."

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Empires grow. Empires decline. That is the lesson of history. Those who refuse to learn the lessons of history - usually because of a believe that they actually HAVE learned those lessons, or were chosen by their god and so the lessons don't apply to them - are condemned to learn those lessons the hard way.

That's the lesson of history.

Another lesson of history is that a receipe for screwing the body politic is to be ruled by aristocrats. Hint, you don't have to have 'lord' before your name to be an aristocrat.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

But Empires have a different need on the part of the body politic, they don't need the same sense of common identity to survive.

An Empire can afford to have groups which believe the others would like to see them eliminated, so long as the Powers That Be, are seen as strong enough to prevent it.

So long as that belief lasts, then there is no need for the parts to be, at all, homogenous.

TK

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

But when the Powers that Be are the Empire..? When the Powers that Be decide that, for their continued survival and prosperity, they must destroy the mechanisms by which non-homogenous factions are reconciled to their co-existence?

Empire is as empire does, on the basis of it it waddles, quacks and swims it is a duck, whatever it calls itself.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The Powers that Be are always the empire (in an empire).

Empires are not democracies.

An empire can afford to have Serbs, and Croats, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Sikhs; Japanese and Ainu.

So long as each group believes that to try and rise against others is to be destroyed; by a groups which is not the object of their ire, then peace (in a general sense) will be the order of the day.

The empire doesn't care that the Christians hate the Jews, that the Lutherans hate the Catholics.

What it cares about is they don't have unrest. So long as the various members are quiescent, there will will calm.

A democracy has to have a different sense of idenity, and one that isn't based on fear of the gov't coming in and beating the snot out of you; because you disagree with policy.

Rather peace and order rise from a sense of shared identity.

TK

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

I think we are using different definitions of empire, although I suspect we would both agree that empires are, by definition, bad things and wouldn't want to live in one - to those who think they are good things the question should be asked 'Would you like to live in someone else's?'.

Democracy is not inimical to empire - for most of its lifetime the British Empire was a functioning democracy. The USA is a functioning democracy but it is behaving like an imperium (and the Monroe Doctrine goes way, way back)

When the shared identity is deliberately diminished - as appears to be the case in your country at present - the question remains, 'Cui bono?' I return to my remark about aristocracy.

Change, however, is constant. Francis Fukuyama was utterly wrong.

We are living in interesting times - but we are living, and able to learn our lessons, if we are willing. If we aren't, there is only one conclusion. That's the lesson of evolution.

Picture a raised glass. Here's to today, and all the promise it holds, and to tomorrow, which holds still more.

MT

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I think we are using different defintions.

Because I don't think the British Empire was a democracy, for anyone who wasn't living in the confines of he United Kingdom (and not really for many of those).

Until the voting reforms granting suffrage to one and all, most of those in England didn't have a say in who represented them.

And the countries outside of Britain had even less say than that (and yes, I know the United States has other problems with franchise but beasts are different).

India was ruled, until Victoria's day, by a chartered monopoly; as if Chrysler were the legal gov't of Michigan, with an army (subsidised by some separate Gov't) and the power to enter treaties, etc.

The only reason I'd say an empire is a "bad" thing is that the common good at hand isn't that of the people, because the people to whom the government answers aren't those who are directly affected by policy (with the exception of a very small group, whose interests are personal).

TK

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I'm unclear as to what "lose in Iraq" might mean at this point.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It means not win.

The real question is what defines "win." If that were to be resolved, the question of "losing" would have actual merit.

TK

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Yes, after I posted that comment I thought to myself, "Wait a minute--I'm unclear as to what 'win in Iraq' means, too."

[qp4.livejournal.com]

In the parlance of the day I tend to lean towards the "liberal" ideaology. If I voted it would probably be Democrat.

That said I tend to believe there are "liberals" that want us to lose the war. I tend to believe there are a large number of our countrymen out of perhaps some misplaced sense of guilt about their own lives that hate the United States. Much as a depressed person hates and wishes harm on their self.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

Such "Liberals" do exist. I think they're about as common as the "Conservatives" who want a major US city to get attacked by terrorists again, either to punish the inhabitatns for voting Democrat or to "Wake people up!".

WoW!

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

I like this post, but isn't the poll just a way of asking a question to ensure the answer? "When did you stop beating your wife?"

While I agree with what you say, I find it hard to recast the Bushies' desire for war in Iraq in any way that means the well has not already been poisoned. Their desire for the general interest never seems to coincide with mine, and I distrust their motives and "common good" probably as much as they do mine.

At least it caused me to look up Spengler before I commented, but it does seem we're at the late stage of empire & fruiting.

[sethg]

I am reminded of a tip from Daniel Davies' One-Minute MBA class:

"Fibbers' forecasts are worthless. Case after miserable case after bloody case we went through, I tell you, all of which had this moral. Not only that people who want a project will tend to make innacurate projections about the possible outcomes of that project, but about the futility of attempts to 'shade' downward a fundamentally dishonest set of predictions. If you have doubts about the integrity of a forecaster, you can't use their forecasts at all. Not even as a 'starting point'."

I think this principle can be applied to the poll you cite. Look at the first paragraph:

"Right Wing News emailed more than 240 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to answer 8 questions. The following 63 blogs responded,..."

We don't know that the 63 respondents are a fair sample of the 240 who were polled, and we know that the right-wing blogosphere is not a fair sample of America. So I don't see how we can project from that poll and know how many readers take those blogs seriously, or how many Americans actually see "the Democrat party" as an Enemy Within that must be neutralized. We can't even use the poll as a starting point for an estimate.

We certainly know that there are some Americans who think that way, and some of them can be very very dangerous. But we didn't need a poll to tell us that; just ask anyone who worked in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building--or any doctor who performs abortions.

My wife was on the Brandeis riflery team, and she says that after she is no longer nursing, she'd like to join a gun club and brush up on her skills. I'm hoping that I'll be able to take some classes, too...because we need a few more Democrats in this country who know how to handle firearms. :-/ (There's a T-shirt design in there somewhere...)

Insufficient information to conclude "these bloggers believe isn't..."

[(Anonymous)]

Quite possibly these bloggers believe both that "a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons" and also that "the war is lost, fruitless, a waste of blood, treasure and stature in the world." Granted support for a surge implies some degree of hope but I suspect some (e.g. Pickett and Skorzeny respectively) supported the various gambles of Pickett's Charge or the Battle of the Bulge without any real faith either would succeed.

It is quite true that many Americans, including some of today's Congresscritters, celebrated the fall of Saigon and did in fact "like to see us lose" in Vietnam for political reasons - and that regardless of whether the ARVN would or would not have repelled the NVA invasion if given the aid then President Ford requested. This makes credible, at least in the sense of not impossible, a notion that Congresscritters "would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons."

Curiously enough some Congressional Democrats who speak for an immediate exit from Iraq also speak in favor of intervention in Darfur without making it clear why there are greater prospects for success in Darfur.

For another example of the defects of Democracy consider the Washington Post which finds it intolerable that the District should be prevented from imposing the will of the people by so slight a thing as the Bill of Rights.

"We get around this, in the modern age of large states, but having a system which puts my vote in the hand of another, who is holding a number of other proxies." Consider too the difference between Burkean Representation and the notion of implied referendum in which the proxy holder truly votes proxies - that is the representative's vote in assembly is weighted by the number of supporters not by district.

CEM

Re: Insufficient information to conclude "these bloggers believe isn't..."

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

A system of actual proxies is worse than straight democracy, because verifying the proxies is, in a practical sense, impossible.

Who shall keep the register? Without such a register how can I rescind my proxy? What if I refuse to give a proxy? Am I refused a say in the "thing" or do I get to vote for myself?

And those who have large proxy counts would become powerful beyond reason, and the targets of all sorts of less than savory suasion. Duke Cunningham represented one of the smallest groups we have (because our representatives are not evenly apportioned, Wyoming voters equal something like seven California voters) and he was offered, and took, large bribes.

How much more tempting the man who holds unequal power, because he has more proxies.

Demagogues become players. Lyndon LaRouche and the Aryan Nation would both be guaranteed seats at the table.

The Post, for all you disagree with them, is not a defect of democracy. They don't get to impose that difference; with proxies they might (the "will of the people" when applied as you use it isn't all that honest either. Have you taken a referendum, and so measured the will of those people? Or is it a case of the bench making a ruling because a small group [in this case six people] has brought a case, and the interpretation of the law happens to co-incide with your prejudice? Absent a clear statement from "the people" either is a claim which can be asserted. Since the legislative body which decides on the laws of The District is the House of Representatives, there are lots of flaws to be ascribed to pretty much any piece of legislation; not the least of which it isn't the will of those people; even by proxy, since they don't get to elect a single one of those who decide; that is done by the rest of us).

So too is your use of Darfur a red herring, since the cases aren't parallel. If we were there, and the cause was doomed, and they were saying, "Stay the course, lets just toss some more troops in, and see if that fixes it" then you would be right.

But peacekeeping is a different thing (and we have a model which works, as well as the likelihood of both a passsed UN resoltion, and allies), which means they are apples and oranges.

Pickett almost certainly knew the odds of success were slim. Skorzeny, not so much; because he was a low-level operative. But both of those cases are also different in kind, because they were actually in the thick of things, they had their necks on the line (and Skorzeny ended up with his in the noose, so to speak [sense he was shot]). None of these bloggers has been willing to enlist, and when those who are supportive, and eligible, have been asked, they turn out to have, "other priorities."

TK

[blackbirdcd.livejournal.com]

The country, as a whole, needs to get through this with some level of healthy dialogue. If it does not, then it will crumble into a miserable shadow barely resembling its former self. That may be what it takes to set the stage for a superior replacement.

I doubt we'll have a total collapse of the Federal State, but we may have enough of an economic downslide to pull the entire nation off of the superpower list.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of similarities to the race problem, here in the UK and in the USA. And I think terrorism-fear is fuelling it. The rhetoric of immigration--even entirely legal immigration and migrant workers, as is happening in the UK--is based on an us-and-them worldview of the sort that can wreck democracy. They aren't like us. We don't have to listen to them...

And it doesn't take many people to react to that, to feel that they don't have a voice, and so have to do something, for terrorism to happen without any need for a James Bond villain pulling the strings. Guy Fawkes didn't need a Blofeld or a bin Laden.

As for the survey that sparked your posting, it's likely so full of holes that you could use it as a fishing net. It's so loaded a question that you'd be drummed out of Las Vegas if you were caught with it in a casino.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, go to the November archives of all those right wing blogs, and you will find hundreds upon hundreds of comments (occasionally by the bloggers themselves) about how states that went "Defeatocrat" DESERVE to get bombed by terrorists. Yet suggesting that Republicans want Terrorists to attack the US for political purposes is considered ridiculous...

[droops.livejournal.com]

I've seen that attitude (us v. them) expressed by both parties and by people of all different types of political belief. It has been manifesting itself on the national level for decades, and has worked it's way down into the state and local levels too. It isn't all-pervasive, but it does have an insidious effect over time.