THE DILEMMA OF DEMOCRACY

     Plato is said to have used the example of a ship to explain the weakness of Athenian democracy. I am no philosopher but I think about stuff. I'm pretty sure i can make a case that I think more about stuff than the Republican of today. Never-the-less, they would strenuously argue for their right to have an opinion, even though it is backed by nothing. Democracy has its weaknesses, which are on display today to a greater degree than at any time since we broke free from the monarchy.

     In Plato's example the ship and the ship of state are beset by the same weaknesses. The ship, whether the trireme of Athens, the British war ship of Mutiny on the bounty, or the aircraft carrier of today, are populated by a fractious crew that is kept in line by laws  and customs, with the final control by the captain: in Moby Dick it is Ahab saying, "there is one God that is lord over the Earth, and one captain that is lord over the Pequod". Never-the less there is always the guy who thinks he can be the captain, if only the God's had been  accommodating. Sometimes that fellow in the first tier of oars, that seldom sees the sky, is capable of becoming the captain. Those times are rare in history. Sometimes the Captain is an intolerant ass in the portly form of Captain Bligh. We honor Mr Christian for deposing Captain Bligh and taking control of the Bounty because our sentiments are with the beleaguered crew. What we forget is that Captain Bligh, for all his faults, sailed his little lifeboat, and the crew adrift with him, all the way from the South Pacific to Portsmouth Harbor,  some 9000 miles, and the remaining Bounty mutineers eventually got hung from the yardarm. But in the years between the mutiny, and their unfortunate end, they lived an idyllic life on an island, had families, and were free from the oppression of a megalomaniac captain. We do not in this scenario give much thought to the islanders, who had lived peacefully for thousands of year's free of philosophers or captains, until the white man. Later accounts look at the natives from the standpoint of the females on the island, Pitcairn island and Tahiti before that. History is complicated and we tend not to think too far beyond our biases. Especially those conservatives who can't define conservatism.  

     Getting back to our fractious crew and it's captain to be: Plato believes that we must have educated men to run the ship of state, literally only men. The usual politicians are concerned for their own power. What he proposed was a leadership of the philosopher who would have the needs of the broadest portion of the electorate, and presumably not concern for personal power. Maybe that would have been a good idea when philosophers were interested only in deep thought, but we sometimes poison them so their concerns are tempered by the need for survival. Also complicating things is people who are not philosophers who presume they can discuss philosophy because they think about stuff, deeply or not.

     We have been a democracy some 247 years, counting from when we first declared our independence. During that time we have had a couple philosophers and many more sophists elected president. Yet we have managed pretty well to avoid electing our top leadership from those who were motivated by naked power. A recent example of failure is one who is in pursuit of power again, by making America great again (again), but mostly remains clothed. With a belly like that it is no wonder. Our saving grace has been people with qualifications who operate in the lower tiers of power but still manage to see the sky. Conservatives would call them "the deep state. They are mostly learned Men and women. Depending on which party they are also racially diverse and dedicated to their jobs. Some of them in the lower ranks can serve several presidents, and attain important skills, others serve at the pleasure of the president. I imagine those who served the last president found him very unpleasant, based on the broad turnover during his single term. 

     What our forefathers did not foresee was a few unelected men with large sources of cash, who used their money to control the election of the candidates of their choice. A candidate chosen to fill their coffers with many times more cash than it cost them to get their candidate elected. Plato, with his trust of learned men would not have seen that. Those mostly seldom seen people inhabiting the deep state managed over the years to keep the people at the top from giving away the entire country, body and soul, to the monied state. That ended in 2016. For a while the investors in the political machine got everything they wanted. What they had not foreseen was that the president they purchased was a power hungry megalomaniac who ran his administration like a crime family. He, and the people he appointed, were stuffing their pockets with anything of value they could get their hands on. At some point enough of the people caught on to what was going on and that president lost re-election. He lost both the popular vote and the heavily gerrymandered electoral college. Something the now former president's party had began to take for granted would never happen. But this man would not concede his loss. He set out to destroy our trust in elections with rules and standards that had been birthed over 2300 years ago. He was aided in his theft by a media empire that had been collaborating with the wealthy men of power since its creation in 1996. But that is beginning to crumble. The former president who wishes to be president is mired in legal troubles on a vast scale. The people that the former president appointed to those deep layers of government distinguished themselves as textbook examples of the definition of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a condition that is defined by not knowing what they dont know. How they managed to be business successes makes us wonder at the futility of honoring business leaders. This in turn has sucessful business leaders running frightened from the people they supported for so many years. 

     The House of Representatives in marginal control by the party of the former president is tearing itself apart with the hapless Speaker of the House held hostage to his Dunning-Kruger party. The minority leader of the Senate, who used to be majority leader, is showing signs of lock-jaw from watching the collapse of the legislative process as designed by the Koch family over many decades. The Supreme Court Chief Justice is watching the court that he leads fall into historic disfavor following evidence of graft and corruption that we have not seen since Plessy v Fergusen, mostly among the Justices that were engineered by the Federalist Society that does not seem to be Federalist. And we now find business leaders quaking because all of their self-enhanced power could be lost if the House of Representatives does not raise the debt ceiling, a debt ceiling that has reached historic proportions since the former president who wants to be president again signed into law a historic $2 trillion taxcut for the people that had been contributing to the political success of the Dunning-Kruger party, which is now being exposed as blatently fascist and racist. 

     These are troubled times and all of us are fearful of what the future may hold. Maybe we need that philosopher in the Platonic mold who is capable of leading platonically.