by keybored | 2025-05-25 12:19:23+00:00
(1/2, continued in reply along with footnotes)

I do tend to associate military coups with democratic regimes that get too democratic.

Post note: after writing this I might go too hard on the admittedly widespread (but stupid) practice of using “democracy” in two senses: real democratic practice and calling governments that we like[0] democratic if they use that name (nominative democracy) and in turn saying that every action was “by the democratic government” or “by democracy”. But the article does go into the point about using “democracy” for propaganda:

> Indeed, in the present moment we now call anything we favor “democratic” and anything we oppose “un-democratic.”

So it still seems relevant.

[0] Long-standing democracies including, as we shall see, Myanmnar.

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> (“When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens”).

Just on the face of it without context this doesn’t say anything. Except maybe something like: when you include people outside our own circle of friends and associates, all kinds of shit can happen.

On the rights of other citizens: the democracy envisioned by the American founders was supposed to protect the rights of the opulent.[1]

> The allure of democracy is simple: by allowing people to collectively express their collective will, a representative government should be entitled to rely on their support in carrying out its political agenda.

The allure to who? The founders who wanted to protect their own rights?

Do you need popular support? There’s a Princeton study that showed that for 70% percent of Americans, their own policy preferences have no correlation with what is implemented.[2]

A modern democratic theory is that elites govern with the occassional input from regular people. Those are election cycles. But the input of regular people is more to do with settling inta-elite disputes. With a well-oiled smoke-filled room you don’t need their input that much.[3

> Nevertheless, in the 20th Century, as the memory of monarchies faded and the threats of fascism and communism blossomed, Americans have gradually come to believe that democracy embodied the American project. Despite America’s traditional suspicion of pure democracy (and James Madison’s plea for a government run by enlightened delegates), “democracy” came to stand for all that is good and holy in a world threatened by godless collectivism and/or authoritarianism. Beginning with President Wilson’s exhortation to “make the world safe for democracy” our Founders’ strong philosophical misgivings about mob rule appear to have been discarded as part of America’s search for common ground with allies against authoritarian alternatives. Unlike the Founders, 20th Century Americans weren’t trying to rise above the shortcomings of western European governments in such as those in France or Britain, but rather trying to find common cause with them.

Let’s talk about communism. Italy was dealing fine with getting rid of fascism. They worked against it towards the end of the war (lynching people like Mussolini) and they didn’t go home at the end of the war either. But these were socialists. So the CIA intervened in Operation Gladio, where they empowered fascists in order to get rid of the socialist influence.

Democracy? The US would rather Italy have fascism.

The rest of that paragraph is just political science buzzwords.

> Indeed, in the present moment we now call anything we favor “democratic” and anything we oppose “un-democratic.”

Indeed, the author just takes utterances at face value without thought.

Democracy for most people is good. That’s why they say it. Do they (the politicians, the pundits, the propagandists) mean it? Well do they mean it when they say they love peace, freedom, equality? Democracy to them is another propaganda word. Don’t overthink it.

> We do this even when the problem we are concerned with is itself an inherently democratic one, only reluctantly acknowledging the very significant role played by the pervasive (and anti-democratic) “checks and balances” built into our own federal constitution.

Don’t worry. Democracy that you don’t like can just be called “mob rule”. See previous sloganeering.

Or populism.

> The fault lines inherent in democracies—so well known to the Founders—can be showcased by (mostly) contemporary examples.

People who quote the Federalist Papers tend to think that whatever the founders said is the eternal truth, ipso facto they said it. So what are they?

> The problem of having the “last” election – electing anti-democratic government.

This is as much of a problem with democracy as an absolute monarch abolishing monarch. In other words it isn’t. Nothing is permanent. Nothing can be protected forever and flawlessly with the impeccable foresight of some founders.