THE WEAKNESS OF DEMOCRACY

Those of us who admire the Democratic process and proclaim it's strengths, even though it's greatness has become something of an irony of late, have arrived at an inflection point. It's not working out. To be fair, it has often not worked out, at least for those of us citizens not on an inside track. The eponymous CRT would be just one example. But we could always say before, that we were improving, we were reaching for what was beyond our grasp. Sometimes we were able to hold on to that thing that was just out of reach, but our grasp was not quite solid enough to hold on firmly.. 

    I'm an admirer of philosophy. The act of philosphyzing, not necessarily the philosophers. It is the only option for those of us untutored in philosophy. Had I been born a century earlier, I'd be one of the old men around the pot-bellied stove at the hardware store, solving the various problems to come before our discussion group. Naturally, the Greek philosophers, though we know them only dimly, come up as does democracy, and how it has changed down the millenia. It is well known among us philosophyzers that Socrates was not an admirer of democracy. Nor was his student Plato. How, Socrates would ask, can we confidently set out in a boat with a captain who is untutored in all of the skills of captaining a ship, and in whatever the vagaries of nature can throw your way? But it is not the captain alone, that reaching a safe port depends on. He must have a well-trained crew and the skill to motivate them without them hating the officers. Herman Melville's book, Billy Budd deals with this issue. Melville was not explicitely a philosopher but he is known as an anti-transcendentalist, which is some kind of philosophyzing, though specifically what, is beyond my reach. No doubt he would have been one of those old men around the pot-bellied stove at the ship chandelery had he not been a writer. Democracy would not be the most effective way to man a ship. The ship is best served as a military dictatorship. But we have higher ambitions for this republic. I can testify to Socrates wisdom, if only in a small way, I can also testify, based on recent events, that democracy worked better when it was not a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business. 

     For most of our short history we have managed to find that captain complete with well-qualified crew.  Nearly all of those well-qualified captains and crew were well-tutored in civics, which can be called the ship of state. Among them were some well-known and venerated men. We celebrate them in our history. Sometimes we were surprised that they rose to such heights when needed. Those who failed the test of history are respected, but not venerated. Those who are venerated are still examined for their leadership skills, and their faults.  And then there was this fella with the golden toilet. His tutoring appears to be less than he proclaims. His crew often came from prestigious universities, but their self-interest interferes with their wisdom at performing the job. Not only was he not qualified to captain the ship, he was not even qualified to raise the anchor. The same could be said of his crew. The anchor is raised by the capstan with men at each spoke stamping and pushing in unison while singing sea-chanties. Had he been ordered to the capstan this former president would have stood before the waist and pontificated on how he could do it better. A lazy, blathering sailor in the days of the great wooden navy's or the whaling ships, was called a "waister". A fractious bragging man who stood at the waist of the ship and boasted about his competance. This waister became captain. And brought with him other waisters. We went into a humdinger of a stormy voyage. One storm after another with this captain and his chosen crew stuffing their pockets with booty as the elements raged around our sorry ship of state. We made it through those storms, but just barely. A couple members of that crew, a few men and a woman, whom we had not to that point thought much about, saved us from floundering in that storm and fetching up on an unfamiliar reef. We had a four-year voyage with that captain, after which we chose a wizened and able, if not exceptional captain. He chose an experienced and capable crew. But we are not safe yet. That crew of the old captain who could not captain, cannot escape the withering gaze of that incompetant man. Nor can they carry on grift at the highest levels that they became used to. He, the former guy not only controls the crew, he is loved by the villagers, who have no clue what lies beyond that harbor entrance. Many are thousands of miles distant from that harbor entrance, the closest they get to water is a bassboat. He has set about to run for president in 2024. He is paving the way with state secretaries who can control, not the vote, but what comes out of that vote. He has a case before the once Supreme Court that would allow a state legislature to declare the winner of a contested election. And he is enriching himself and his cronies on the constant grift. There is a vast media empire that is part of this grift. We will soon find out how successful he, and they, will be. 

     Donald Trump is a businessman. A businessman by virtue of his owning a vast business empire across many business disciplines. At the center of his business empire is grift, conning everyone from investors to janitors with his empty blather. Buried somewhat deeper in this business empire is money laundering for people who you don't want to cross if you value life. While he is tending to this business empire, he still has to make an appearance to entice the nation to which he aspires to once more lead. To achieve this, he, like the gangland Don, must create a situation where he cannot lose. D'ese politics ain't beanbag! Smart people, philosophers of politics, even some philosophizers of politics, as well as writers who also find themselves in front of that mythical pot-bellied stove all have warned us, like the harbor soothsayer in Moby Dick telling us not to ship on the Pequod, to steer clear of this guy. Yet we find ourselves climbing the gangplank to place our mark in the ships log before the grim businessmen who hired the ship.

     I spent a miserable couple of weeks many years ago, trying to sell door-to-door. A motivated salesman could retire wealthy they promised, and brought up examples of such highly motivated people to speak to us. I guess I wasn't motivated enough. At one of these sales meetings by the Tony Robbins crew, I was told about Socratic selling, asking a series of questions, answered with a yes, designed to elicit a yes at the close of the pitch. It was here that it dawned on me that Americans don't know shit about classical Greece, or philosopy, or history, or captaining that vast ship of state. Or any other kind of disciplined study. This is the larger lesson of the CRT embroglio. We know just enough to create a convincing cover story, but not enough to learn the important lessons. Socrates taught his students to ask a series of questions designed to help the truth appear. Finding a "yes" has nothing to do with it. Selling a con must be the most difficult sales job ever. Most of us are too suspicious to fall for it, at least not whole-heartedly, though that niggling thought remains behind asking, "am i missing out on a big score". But you know you are going to have a great day, if you find someone eager to buy the con, and if that happens you are sucked further into the con.  Once more the wisdom of the philosophers is teased and tortured to fit the needs of corporatism. And it is this realm of corporatism that not yet Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell enlisted to save capitalism in 1971. It was those wealthy oligarchs who set about funding thinktanks and tax-free organizations designed to protect their pecuniary interests, at the risk of democracy itself. They became, I'm reluctant to say, the "deep state". Over that time they became increasingly successful, culminating in the tea-party movement. Tea-partiers were like the hundreds of chimpanzees sitting before laptops with the intent of writing Shakespeare. We never achieved that goal, the closest we got was Clive Cussler. They were led by people, mostly men, who were just smart enough to know that the Boston Tea Party was an early anti tax protest, but not smart enough to know that the taxation they were opposed to was the unequal taxation exhibited by those minimal taxes paid by British shipping compared to what was paid by colonial shippers. From that movement the road to trumpism was paved. Those metaphorical chimpanzees abandoned the laptops and started to help themselves to the cargo and any shiny gems which might be laying around. Those oligarchs get their cut, so are not motivated to save us from this con. Those thousands of monkeys are not even capable of writing copy for Foxnews. But they are competant enough to lionize the captain and incompetent crew in front of a television reporter who doesnt make them answer the follow-up question.

Competent enough to make millions of untutored citizens buy into the con. And the wealth, that never trickled down to us floods the corner offices of corporatism. We are a half century into that manifesto from Lewis Powell. It has worked out well for them, as it should when we are the only ones fetched up on that reef.