Are we talking about American Democracy, where the police have carte blanche to brutalize protesters for objecting to police brutality and a SCOTUS majority can overturn a popular election?
Or Chinese Democracy where you can be in any party you want, but only the CCP gets to hold any real power? Or the Taiwanese Parliament, where politicians form gangs that attempt to beat up each other’s members?
Or Thai Democracy, where the courts are selected by the King and regularly disband majority governments for committing Lese Majesty?
Are we talking about Apartheid Israeli Democracy, where over half the population is disenfranchised for being Palestinian?
How about Iranian Democracy, where the Supreme Council gets to decide who can run for office?
Do we like the Brazilian style of Democracy, where an elected Prime Minister can be deposed by the AG and a fascist can fuck around massacring indigenous people for a Presidential term, while the former PM gets the charges dropped and has to run for his old seat?
Are we big fans of the DPRK, where a single family has dominated the federal government since the country’s founding? Or are we more inclined towards the Republic of Korea, which continues to send up the children and friends of the old 1970s Dictatorship to run the country, because 90% of the economy is controlled by six billionaire families?
Like, you can’t just say “anti-democracy”. Cuba claims to be a democracy. Argentina claims to be a democracy. The UK claims to be a democracy. Russia claims to be a democracy. What kind of democracy are we actually against?
If you want to fix things I’m all for it, but lets not pretend that the notion of “Western Democracies” being responsible for their problems has any merit whatsoever.
lets not pretend that the notion of “Western Democracies” being responsible for their problems has any merit whatsoever.
The problems tend to be anti-democratic in nature. The cozy relationship between mass media and corporate interests restricts information to the voting public. Privatization of public spaces forces candidates to raise enormous amounts of money just to secure space to host a rally or get a minute of TV coverage. And the legal means by which private party leadership can restrict access to a primary, combined with the broader public limits on who can participate in an election as an independent, help dictate the quality of candidates that voters have to choose from.
“Western Democracy” has always consisted, first and foremost, as a bunch of backroom deals and handshake arrangements. JD Vance didn’t get the VP slot under Trump because he was the second most popular Republican in the primaries. Neither Mike Johnson nor Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House because they were the nation’s most beloved Congressfolks. Nobody on the current Supreme Court cares what the electorate thinks of them. None of this is small-d democratic. And all of it contributes to the basket of problems that plague our dysfunctional domestic policy.
Primaries aren’t restrictive, its just that nobody actually votes in them. I think the highest turnout in USA history was 36.9 Million people in a primary election, chosen to represent 81 Million DNC Voters and again to represent 329.5 Million Americans total.
There is a huge problem with campaign finance laws in the USA, despite our many laws regulating it, and admittedly not having a democracy would fix that specific problem, but it sure as fuck won’t make any American’s lives better.
