THE GLOBAL COLLAPSE
OF DEMOCRACY
By Jack Random
In Common Sense, one of the most influential writings in history,
Tom Paine makes his case against monarchy and hereditary succession by
essentially stating that the proof was in the pudding:
“One of the strongest natural
proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disapproves
it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving
mankind an ASS FOR A LION.” [Sic]
The King of England and leader of
the British Empire at that time was George the Third – aka Mad King George – a
man who reigned by divine right for nearly six decades. In losing the crown jewel of the empire
to independence, Britannia’s curse became America’s blessing and the first
experiment in modern democracy was given birth on the world stage.
Now, nearly two and a half
centuries later, Paine’s argument against the monarchy has turned on its head,
taking aim at the nation of its birth.
A system designed to weed out the unfit and unqualified has failed in
stunning fashion. We have elected
a succession of corrupt, morally challenged, inept and/or power hungry leaders,
culminating with an individual who embodies every disqualifying characteristic
in triplicate.
The assault on democracy in the
United States of America is unprecedented and has taken numerous tracks. Disenfranchisement targeting minorities
is a particularly American phenomenon.
Applied to Florida, it accounts for the election of George W. Bush. Applied to Ohio it may account for his
reelection. With the Supreme
Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act (Shelby County v. Holder 2013), we
have seen a spirited revival of the Jim Crow days. Targeted disenfranchisement has become a standard practice
of the Republican Party. The
strategy is key to holding on to the South and other states with large and
growing minority populations.
Designer redistricting – otherwise know as Gerrymandering – is another
technique applied to congressional districts to insure that Republicans have
disproportionate representation in the lower house of congress.
If your goal
was to erode trust in democracy you could not have devised a more effective
measure than that delivered by our Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal
Election Commission 2010. In the
wake of that malicious decision a corporation gained all the rights of
citizenship and money gained the status of constitutionally protected speech. The highest court in the land was
warned over and over that its decision would empower those with the most money
to purchase the institutions of government. While the Court was not impressed with the argument that is
exactly what happened.
The cost of running for public
office has skyrocketed but the dollar amounts do not tell even half the
tale. Given the extreme amounts
required to mount a successful political campaign, both parties in a two-party
duopoly have abandoned the working class.
The Democrats used to be the party of labor. No more. It has
been decades since they have staked claim to that designation. The Democrats pay lip service to the
cause of labor but when it comes to protecting the right to organize they
consistently fall short. They
would lose their corporate backing and the support of Wall Street in particular
if they acted on their pro-worker rhetoric. Moreover, representing labor is not necessary when the
Republican Party is openly antagonistic to the working class. The party of the wealthy opposes a
raise in the minimum wage and promotes Right to Work laws that cripple a
union’s ability to organize in the workplace.
Because neither party genuinely
represents the interests of the workers the gap between the wealthy and the
rest of us continues to grow.
Subsequent discontent with the institutions of government and media
continues to increase.
While money in electoral politics
can go a long way toward explaining the American political system the same
cannot be said for European nations.
Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the Czech
Republic, Spain and Germany have no limits on contributions or spending yet
their campaigns do not attract the same extreme amounts of money as ours
do. France, Canada, Greece,
Ireland and Japan, have strict limits on both spending and contributions. The United Kingdom has limits on
spending while others limit contributions. [1]
With such a variety in campaign
financing laws and regulations, it would be difficult to find a direct
relationship between such laws and the kind of corruption that would destroy
public confidence in government institutions. Therefore, other factors must be operating to create such
widespread international discontent.
[2]
It is the betrayal of the working
people that crosses international boundaries and invades the body politic of
virtually every democratic republic.
It is the gap between the rich and the rest that creates an opportunity
for toxic propagandists to attack the institutions of democracy with pseudo populists
like Marine Le Pen of France, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and our own
Donald Trump.
Instead of standing up to our
example, other developed nations in Europe and Latin America have
stumbled. While Emmanuel Macron
and Angela Merkel put up a show of dignified defiance, the peoples of France
and Germany are so disillusioned that they find themselves on the same wobbly
ground as the American electorate did in 2016. Brazil – the largest and most influential republic in the
southern hemisphere – has elected an autocrat and sworn enemy of democracy
while other notable republics in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America are
stumbling on the edge of the same self-destructive madness.
How did this happen and why? Can we make corrections before the ship
of state crashes into the rocks, taking the alliance of western democracies
with it?
Representative democracy has
always contained the seed of its own demise. The people have the authority to remove themselves from the
seat of power. In the form of the
vote, the people can elect a president and legislative representatives sworn to
democracy’s demise in the ultimate display of political suicide.
While it would
seem absurd, the people of Brazil have chosen that path. They have elected Jair Bolsonaro, a far
right nationalist who embraces with all his heart the authoritarian form of
government. Just as President
Donald Trump has praised authoritarian leaders in China, Russia and the
Philippines, Bolsonaro has praised the military dictatorships of Brazil’s dark
past. He has expressed admiration
for Augusto Pinochet, the notorious military strongman of Chile who tortured
and “disappeared” his political enemies.
In 1992
Bolsonaro stated: “I am in favor
of a dictatorship…. We will never
resolve serious national problems with this irresponsible democracy.” In 1999 he said: “I’m in favor of torture.” More recently he has expressed contempt
for the rights of gays and racial minorities in a manner that would shame
Trump’s declaration in Charlottesville.
[3]
Like Trump, Bolsonaro has
exploited an inherent fear of those who do not look or act or talk like
him. He has capitalized on
distrust of institutions, corruption and an ever-widening gap between the
wealthy and the poor.
Like Trump, the election of
Bolsonaro was made possible by a convergence of unlikely circumstances – most
prominently the incarceration of the leading socialist candidate combined with
a devastating economic crisis and an explosion in violent crime.
In France the people have taken to
the streets in protest of President Emmanuel Macron ostensibly over a raise in
the transportation tax. The
protests persisted despite Macron’s backpedaling on the issue because it ran
much deeper than one tax policy.
Macron seemed out of touch with the people. The root cause of their discontent is a distrust of the
institutions of government and a growing disparity between the wealthy elite –
of which Macron is one – and the working class. France’s far right is poised to take advantage of this
discontent despite the fact that there is not a chance on earth the National
Rally party of Marine Le Pen would do anything to address working class
woes.
In Germany Chancelor Angela
Merkel’s popularity has taken a hit over the issue of immigration. Germany has the taken the lead in
accepting Syrian refugees and trying to integrate them as a cheap labor
force. Much to Merkel’s dismay it
is a situation that pleases neither the refugees nor the German working
class. Germany’s resurgent
Neo-Nazis are more than ready to take advantage of widespread discontent. Merkel is the central leader of
Europe’s hyper conservative neoliberal economic policies that have punished the
working class for the disastrous excesses of the financial elite. More than any other single leader,
Merkel is the enforcer of the austerity regime that has stripped away the
social safety nets of those nations whose economies imploded when the Ponzi
scheme of international finance was exposed.
The disease of which Donald Trump
is only a symptom has spread rapidly throughout the democratic world. What used to be confined to developing
countries where corruption is a way of life has now invaded the most
established representative democracies in the world.
Why? It would be easy to blame it all on the Russians and their
brigade of hackers and paid propagandists. It would be easy to blame the Chinese for unfair trade
practices, stealing the core of our economic wealth. It would be easy to blame foreign immigrants for
overwhelming our culture and taxing our systems of social support. All of these things have had some role
in weakening public trust in our essential democratic and financial
institutions but none of them are responsible at the core.
It is always
easier to blame the infamous other for
our woes but it is rarely true. If
we wish to rectify the situation, we must first recognize the enemies of
democracy at home. We have created
and systematically fortified a system that embraces the rich, diminishes the
working class and discards the interests of the poor outright.
One factor
impacting elections in both America and internationally is the rise of social
media and the simultaneous decline of traditional news sources. There was a time when Trump’s
accusations of “fake news” would have generated near universal laughter. There was a time when newscaster Walter
Cronkite had more credibility than any politician of his time.
When citizens
distrust the mainstream news media and give as much credence to web sources as
the New York Times, the fourth estate collapses and the propagandists are
elevated to the status of policy makers.
Mainstream news sources are not free of blame in this phenomenon. The paper of record lost much of its
credibility during the coverage of the Iraq War when it was used as a fence for
the Bush administration’s pro-war propaganda machine. For those who forget the infamous Times reporter Judy
Miller, the administration fed Ms. Miller stories regarding weapons of mass
destruction. She quoted reliable
sources and released the reports for public consumption. The administration then cited the Times
as proof of their claims.
The Times was
not alone in cheerleading for the war and the media eventually suffered for its
betrayal of the public trust. That
was before news agencies started firing their reporters and people started
turning to other sources for their news.
It was not before international corporations started buying media with
an eye to exploiting their investment for their own financial gain.
Some argue
with validity that the decline of print and television as news sources was and
is inevitable but it cannot be denied that the decline was accelerated by
lapses in responsible journalism.
These lapses are by no means strictly American. The corporate buyout of news sources is
a global phenomenon though it is often difficult to uncover. [4] Media titan
and rightwing propagandist Rupert Murdoch owns an estimated one third of the
British market. [5] The German media received relatively high marks for
independence and objectivity but relatively low marks for social inclusiveness
and market plurality. [6]
The ultimate
question becomes: Would the
propagandists – foreign and domestic – be able to influence our elections if
the mainstream media and news sources were fully functional?
There is no single factor
responsible for global democratic failure and there is no simple remedy. We have allowed our institutions – from
the media to all branches of government – to be corrupted by the real holders
of power in our world: the economic institutions. There is no greater cause of systemic failure than
this: We have allowed the bankers
and market manipulators complete freedom to operate as they wish. They in turn have convinced the
governments of the world that wealth can be created where none actually exists. When the system collapses, as it
inevitably will, the common people pay the price while the wealthy accumulate
assets from the rubble left behind.
It is relatively easy to destroy a
democracy; it is hard to build it back.
It is impossible if we do not understand the root cause of systemic
failure. The primary function of
economy is not to accumulate wealth just as the primary function of government
is not to enable the accumulation of wealth. The primary function of government is to provide for the
needs of the people and the function of economy is to serve that cause.
In the end,
the failure of democracy is like the early stages of global warming. We are beginning to witness the
damage. We have time to recognize
the danger signs and take determined action. If we ignore the problem and pretend it will self-correct –
as we have with climate change – then we will observe a series of disasters,
each one more alarming than the last.
We have to
rebuild our institutions from the ground up. We have to elect individuals who actually believe in
democracy. If we believe in
democracy then disenfranchisement and gerrymandering become crimes worthy of
incarceration. If we believe in
democracy then we will find a way to curtail the influence of corporate money
and false propaganda carried on social media. If we believe in democracy then we will establish and
protect the rights of organized labor.
If we believe in democracy then we will regulate the nefarious behavior
of Wall Street and the investment class.
If we believe in democracy then we will use the people’s money to
provide universal healthcare. If
we believe in democracy then we will strengthen objective media while
discrediting those news sources that distort the truth in service to corporate
or foreign interests. If we
believe in democracy the antiquated Electoral College will at last cease to
exist.
Can we do all
this? It seems doubtful. We are all too busy with our
technological toys. We are too
tired from the wars already fought.
We are all exhausted by the daily display of tragedy and disaster. How much more must we do?
Still, we have
accomplished a great deal against daunting odds before. We have built unimaginable monuments to
the gods. We have walked on the
moon. We have fought back and
defeated dictators and tyrants. We
have struck down kings and emperors.
We are humans and there is no limit to what we can do when we believe in
a cause.
In the latter
part of the eighteenth century a man without formal education persuaded the
common, working people of thirteen American colonies that democracy was a cause
worth fighting for. The
achievement of that cause stands as a testament to the human will. Now we must rally to the cause
again.
1. “How Our Campaign Finance System
Compares to Other Countries.” The
American Prospect, April 4, 2014.
2. “International Campaign Finance: How do countries compare?” by Nick
Thompson. CNN World, March 5,
2012.
3. “Who is Jair Bolsonaro?” The Guardian, September 6, 2018.
4. “Who owns the media in France?” Reporters Without Borders, December 8,
2107.
5. “The Elephant in the Room: New Report on UK Media Ownership.” Media Reform Coalition, April 24, 2014.
6. “Monitoring
Risks for Media Pluralism in the EU and Beyond. Report: Germany.”
Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom. December 2016.
