I intend to tell you, dear reader, what democracy is: not as an abstract ideal that represents nothing but "The Good", which is something about which we have had to change our minds very thoroughly, but as it actually exists and as it is actually practiced.
Here is what the democratic state is:
A society in which a man lives better when he has no strong convictions and claims there is no truth other than all convictions and truth are mere subjective opinions that must conform to what is permitted by Law.
A society where this former statement is immediately contested by a chorus that says: "no, you live better when you are willing to die for the state which grants you freedom! Ask not what your country can do for you, but how you can sacrifice for your country! The nation must be your highest conviction and value, without it, nihilism reigns!"
A society which looks down upon clarity, clear distinctions, and reasoned knowledge with suspicion.
A society which instead pats itself on the back for asserting with absolute certainty that everything is ambiguous, slippery, unknowable, shrouded in fog and mist.
With its absolute certainty that everything is uncertain people in this society also know that this society and thus themselves are fundamentally good and moral. It is always the others who are evil immoral inhuman assholes.
A society which prefers immediate feeling, vague intuition, personal revelations, and subjective outpourings of emotion to scientific objectivity while nonetheless proclaiming every whimsical flight of fancy as "facts and logic".
A society than proclaims an unbridgeable chasm between heart and head, mind and body, while also speaking about a holistic organic approach.
A society which the more it carries out deadly brutality proclaims humanism, freedom, democracy, human rights.
A society which says their ideal does not correspond to the real, but never therefore lets this affect its unbreakable belief in the ideal itself.
A society where after a politician makes a politically divisive and incendiary remark, he immediately accuses opponent of making things too political and of causing division for pointing out his remarks that were intended to further conflicts.
A society in which a person is made to feel ashamed and afraid when he says what he thinks -- while being told that he should be thankful his government has even graciously permitted him to hold an opinion -- and remains happy when he says nothing while keeping his nose to the grindstone.
A state where people do well because they praise their leaders. This groveling praise is called "genuine dialogue"; the less criticism involved the more it dons the cloak of "critical thinking".
A state in which it is possible to be condemned without trial as long as the word "foreigner" or "terrorist" is uttered.
A society whose leaders appoint themselves according to who raises the most corporate donations and therefore achieves the means to sway a majority vote.
A society in which 12 people own more wealth than the rest combined.
A society where the spying device in your pocket listens to your conversations and tracks what you look at and feeds it back to you as a carefully curated marketing algorithm, as well as sending this information to large government spying centers.
A society where priests worth 50 billion dollars speak of serving the poor while demanding these poor people fork over their paychecks and feel ashamed if they ever accept a handout.
A society where the newspapers daily report the abuse of women and children and traffic scuffles among drivers.
A society where political and moral leaders are constantly caught up in scandals where they themselves turn out to be doing what they accuse others of doing.
A society that cannot exist without hypocrisy.
A society in which 8 people live in one cramped apartment.
A society which has illiterate men and women.
A state which permits everyone to travel abroad, but only a minority has the means to do so, and in the majority of people the desire to travel does not occur because they are convinced the rest of the world is a lawless shithole. Only the territory over which their government controls is worth knowing.
A state which has more bombs and spies than doctors and more prisons than hospitals.
A State in which people have to tell lies.
A state in which a debate immediately occurs over what distinguishes a lie from truth because it is far from obvious in this kind of society.
A state in which people have to steal.
A society where people die because they can not afford insulin or heart medication.
A state in which crime and violence is said to be human nature.
A state that produces superb machine guns and missiles while people pay for badly made shoes imported from sweat shops and cancer causing food.
A nation that depicts the bombing of other nations as freedom, which the other nation's people begged for.
A state that encourages its citizens to agree on one view: pluralism. Only this view, that there are many philosophies, many foreign policies, many economic theories, many views on religion, morality and literature is seen as valid. Everyone is free to think inconsequential thoughts; what sticks at the end of the day is what the state puts into law and enforces with guns and batons.
A state in which conflicts between buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants, workers and workers, capitalists and capitalists, workers and capitalists, men and women, various ethnicities, and so on flourish and are used to increase wealth for state and capital at the detriment of the workers.
A state that determines the rights and freedoms, duties and obligations of its citizens, after the citizens cast a blank check mark on a ballot.
A state that presents its practical subjection of its human resources as a kindly benevolent service to their inner nature.
A society which praises human rights as a restriction on the state because the state is also said to want to harm the people it is serving.
A state in which a man is made to identify with and feel responsible for his ancestors. He is encouraged to feel pride or shame for an imaginary collective.
A state in which some people earn 600 times as much as the rest combined.
A government where the wishes of the governed play little role in the decisions of the governing bodies.
A state which has its nose in the business of other states around the world.
A state that thrives on nationalist slogans
A government that believes that nothing matters more than money, growth, and power
A state that is in league with crime all around the world and then fits its ideology to its pact.
A state which wants its foreign ministry to determine the fate of humanity
A state which finds it hard to distinguish between shooting people and liberation.
A state which gives free reign to the proponents of racism, pseudo-scientific quackery and religious superstition.
A state in which the means of production are in the private hands of a few.
A state that supports the armed invasion any country that does not go along with the rules imposed by the most powerful states.
A society that is very melancholy and filled with suicide and many of the people are on pharmaceuticals to cope.
A society where depressing conditions are blamed on chemical imbalances in the brains of depressed people.
A society where a good many people have neck problems from staring at screens all day
A class society with a competitive hierarchy of jobs and careers, where a few are at the top and the rest labor on the bottom for the top.
A state which always knows the will of the people because it manufacturers it through the privately owned free press.
A society where a few media moguls control the narrative and flow of information to the citizens in close cooperation with the intelligence agencies of the government.
A state that executes protesters in the street and then demonizes them as terrorists.
A society which debates whether critics and protesters deserve to be killed or locked up.
A state that punishes people harsher for breaking a speed limit than a company dumping oil in the ocean or releasing toxins after industrial accidents.
A state in which what view of history you hold is turned into a violent street conflict.
A state in which the philosophers and scientific theorists have the same view as the generals and president.
A state in which the elections are always predictable. Either this team or that. Regardless the economy and stock market must grow!
A state which has an economy where the lower the workers are paid and the more they toil, the better.
A state which maintains a secretive monopoly on scientific progress because science is treated as a weapon of war.
A state in which whole groups of people can be transplanted from one place to another according to state calculations.
A state in which workers have no say in how or why work is done.
A state which alone believes it can save humanity.
A state which thinks writing its laws into a constitution makes it beyond criticism.
A society which treats its founding law makers and politicians as sacred deities inspired by God.
A state which thinks it is always right, always a force for good, and all others are evil and wrong.
A society which claims the world is very complicated but actually believes it's very simple.
A society where people have to be sick for a very long time before the can see a doctor.
A society where a medical emergency can cost one their life's savings or home
A society that has beggars and drug addicts.
A state that believes everyone in the world loves it, although the opposite is true.
A state whose citizens are convinced most people in other countries are subhumans.
A state that is convinced that no one in the world has better ideas than it has
A state that does not care if people hate it and even openly say so, as long as people fear and obey it.
A state that decided who may criticize it and how they may do it. A state that decides the parameters of acceptable debate.
A state that does not like its citizens to read old newspapers or authors from opposing ideological camps or other countries.
A state in which ignoramuses and charlatans are reckoned to be scholars and influential personalities in the media.
A state where a man can get rich repeating logical fallacies in front of a crowd.
Now, please pay attention, because I want to tell you what democracy is not: it is not just a means for people to decide how to best live their lives. And it is certainly not a nice opportunity for radical leftists or socialists to present their arguments against this system. It is the state form that corresponds perfectly with modern capitalism.
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