Too Dumb for Democracy?

Q: "Why don't you just tell people the truth? People are smart. They can handle it."
A: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals, and you know it." - Men In Black

By Terry Haines - Ah, Democracy. Sweet Sister of Freedom. America's gift to the world.

Of all the excuses our President Bush has offered to justify our bankrupting our country, utterly destroying Iraq and piling more and more bodies onto a bonfire of hate and rage that will burn in the desert for decades after we finally decide to go home, his favorite has been to "foster democracy". But when the Palestinians got the vote they put the terrorists in power. Germany elected Hitler in a landslide. To this day the majority of Americans who voted for George W Bush in the last election think Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9-11. Let's face it. Democracy is hard. And humans are often too dumb, angry or fearful to do it well. War, on the other hand, is easy.

Ah, war. Bitter Mother of Hatred. America's gift to the world. Our war on drugs translates into "I will put you in prison until you learn to put down the joint and pick up a Zoloft." Our war on poverty translates into "I will take away your children's healthcare until you learn to work harder." And our war on terror translates into "I will knock your country down and kick you in the face until you learn to love freedom."

War is a weed. It self propagates. And it grows well in hard fruitless soil. The people we put in prison come out better criminals. The children we deny health care grow up sick and poor. The countries we kick in the face learn to hate us, and fight us.

Democracy only grows in carefully prepared soil and needs constant tending. It requires a free flow of information and a fairly well informed electorate. And freedom from fear. Too much fear kills democracy. Who cares who the president is if my kids are being shot in the street and the electricity still isn't on? Democracy comes after security.

Ironically the country in the Middle East with the best chance at real democracy is probably Iran. Their population is young and well educated, they love Baywatch and rap music, and their fearsome enemies Iraq and Afghanistan have been removed by the United States. The mullahs are barely clinging to control. The democratic system that is already in place came so close to electing a secular majority that their Grand Ayatollah had to disqualify most of the candidates at the last minute, leaving only hard line wing nuts typified by their present president. It is only a matter of time before the young, relatively prosperous population inherits Iran and begins to live publicly the way they do now privately, in secret nightclubs and basement plasma screen theaters. The mullahs' only hope is that the United States drops a few bombs on them and brings the country together in a unified frenzy of fear. And we probably will.

The ultimate irony, though, is that our own president doesn't believe in democracy. He is an autocrat, right down to his blue blooded bones. The blatant campaign of the Bush Administration to assert its primacy over Congress, fill the judiciary with its own agents, establish a secret surveillance system over the population and control the media has arguably been its only success. Every act speaks to the mistrust they have for our democratic republic with its checks and balances. They have centralized power in the presidency and insulated the executive branch from scrutiny. They have made a new office: the Executive King. This ruler does not answer to the masses. He takes his counsel from the new aristocracy: the leaders of planet spanning corporations for whom war is good business and fear spurs sales.

Yes, despite his monumental incompetence at everything except seizing power it is clear that Mr. Bush shares one conviction with the Grand Ayatollah Khameini and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He thinks he knows better than the little people what is best for them. He thinks we're too dumb for democracy.

I'll bet Vladimir Putin is chuckling to himself. After the next Russian election a lifelike hand puppet will assume his Presidential role for television appearances. Putin will become Prime Minister and rule indefinitely. He has made himself into a Czar. How jealous is George?

Putin's KGB, renamed the FSB, has conquered Russia. They endured as the Soviet empire melted around them. Now the 'Federal Security Service" controls the government, the military, the media, major industries, resources, transportation and schools. Father Alexander of the Russian Orthodox Church has proclaimed "Thank God there is the FSB. All power is from God and so is theirs." Democracy is dead in Russia. And the Russians don't miss it for the most part. Their short experiment with democracy was scary and confusing. The nauseating sense of freefall they felt after the Soviet collapse was not helped by the surge of gangsters and robber barons that rushed into the gap. Putin and his "spytocracy" stepped in to focus to the people's fear on a vaguely defined enemy ("the West") and to supply an efficient system of control. FSB agents watch over everything now, including industry, to be sure that "companies don't make decisions that are not in the interest of the state."

Here in America corporate lobbyists have weathered the storm much like Russia's KGB. Bush himself will slink away as perhaps our worst president. But he has morphed the presidency into the supreme American power. The U.S. President can have anyone surveilled, jailed and impaled, and never get nailed, because he has "executive privilege". He has fanned our fear for a vaguely defined enemy ("the Terrorist") and fostered a system of control: K Street lobbyists watch over everything now, including Congress, to make sure that the state doesn't make decisions that are not in the best interests of the companies.

Yuri Andropov failed when he tried to save the Soviet Union by making it into a KGB state. But he laid the groundwork, and after a brief liberal swing the former KGB is firmly in charge of Russia. Has Mr. Bush built the throne for our first real strongman leader? Will some skillful demagogue emerge, with all the vast resources of Halliburton, ExxonMobile and the Carlisle Group, who will play on the fear of a ghostly eternal enemy to justify unchecked power?

Democracy is hope. It is the hope that humans can get better as a species. That we can learn, someday, not to blow each other up. It's not easy, but evolution never is.

© AlaskaReport News and Terry Haines