I'm a Chomsky "fan", but not an expert. I think he'd be careful about framing "liberal", but he certainly had a lot to say about elites, and our problems are exactly as you and Mike agree -- that elites are too smug to descend to real democracy. The Founders' fears of mobocracy ("populism"?) are met by civics education (hey, where did that go?), and we are in the throes of reconstituting where the hell we can recover that in time (one-by-one, folks, as Mike suggests - you never know)
I've copied this pregnant sentence for wider sharing - obvious but overlooked in the present state of consumerism: "Democracy isn’t a consumer service where you select preferred policies from competing vendors. It’s a participatory responsibility that demands the hard work of persuasion, coalition-building, and engagement across difference."
I think even there part of the issue is the question of what constitutes "real" democracy.
Is it just voting for legislative representatives (or political parties), in a free and fair election? Then plenty of places have real democracy, but that runs into the problem of the potential for lizard democracy.
Is it the people as a whole voting directly on major issues? That would be how some define it, but that too has its problems, such as worries about a tyranny of the majority trampling even over constitutional safeguards. "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates; every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." (Federalist No. 55) (And even aside from that, direct democracy has failure states such as were seen with the Brexit referendum, or the Australian monarchy referendum.)
Perhaps it is the Landsgemeinde seen in some Swiss cantons to this day, but by my understanding that has the same worries as secret-ballot direct democracy, only now it is a public vote (closer to what Federalist No. 55 warned of, I think; at that time the secret ballot was a far-off innovation). As the macabre observation goes, democracy is two wolves and a chicken voting on dinner.
And perhaps it is participatory democracy, but often it feels in this political environment that the consultation is done merely for show, and often at one remove. A recent initiative in my country saw the government consult not with the affected people directly, but rather have advocacy groups consult with the people, and then consulted with the advocacy groups. This insulated the government from direct popular input, because while any individual citizen might only ever have one chance to confront a Cabinet minister, the advocacy groups were worried about retaining access and thus tempered their feedback. The final proposal fell far, far short of even what advocacy groups recommended; public input online (so not in person, where dialogue could be held) was generally negative toward it, but no changes of significant substance were made (if anything, the proposal was made worse). The final set of online consultations had many contributors outright accuse the government of conducting a quiet genocide against the group they were purporting to help--feedback which no Cabinet minister would have been willing to hear, and have to answer, in person, I am quite sure. The government's final set of answers to the submissions did not even address the point.
So what is "real" democracy? I think that is a very difficult question to answer, and different people will have different--and often seemingly incompatible--definitions of it.
Our Founders were very clear in not wanting a real Democracy. Instead they laid the foundations for what would evolve to be a representative Democratic Republic with checks and balances. They also did not envision nor desire political parties , and the modern corporation did not yet exist. However, it worked fairly well until SCOTUS ruled corporate spending on elections/political issues was the equivalent of Free Speech starting in 1978. After that instead on representing constituents politicians and the parties represented corporate interests. We became a Corporatocracy
That was somewhat my point. Because of the dangers inherent in direct democracy, it is hardly unreasonable to say that it isn't a "real" democracy. (If you leave everything up to a vote, including who gets to vote, then any temporary majority could permanently exclude from voting a temporarily disfavoured minority.)
So then what is a "real" democracy? As I said, I think that is a very difficult question.
Sadly I am coming to the realization many Americans no longer care about Democracy, especially those under the age of 40 since after all, by the time a 40 year old hit 15 in 2000 our Democracy has been a shit show. They don't remember the good times when we had a functional albeit imperfect Democracy where voters demands were not trumped by corporate $$$.
And Americans of all ages seem less interested in the truth and more interested in that which confirms their biases, so they seek out influencers who tell them what they want to hear. Many are simply incapable of distinguishing what is false and what is true and no longer try. The information space has been flooded with so much crap its overwhelming.
Seriously heady times. I opened the Casino this morning and donated 15K to subversive nonprofits who work for the marginalized under the threat of imprisonment for sponsoring terrorism because the demonization of DEI is now being encoded into law and policy across this fair land. I love it when the Casino opens every morning.🥰
This piece reminded me of Chomsky's critique of modern liberalism. It's been a while since I heard it (this was back in 2018 or so), so I may misrepresent it somewhat.
What he argued is that liberalism has manifested itself as a cabal of elites. Those elites disagree on many things, but there is one thing on which they do agree: that they are the ones fit to govern, and while the occasional rabble-rouser may be allowed into the legislatures, they aren't to be allowed to exercise any more power than any other ordinary legislator (and, if possible, should be sidelined).
The role of the people in this implementation of liberal democracy, then, is not to have actual influence over policy; it is to consider the competing proposals of the various factions of the governing cabal and choose between them periodically. True participatory democracy is anathema to this vision of liberal democracy.
What happened in 2016 in the United States was that both parties faced a populist insurgency, the Republican Party with Donald Trump, and the Democratic Party with Bernie Sanders. The insurgency was successful in the former case and failed in the latter (and failed again four years later). Rage at the elite cabal then propelled the successful insurgent to an election victory on the back of support from places that had felt as though the policies of those elites had failed them.
Of course, the insurgency has in turn metastasised into its own elitist cabal with different criteria for inclusion while still attempting to broadcast the populist message. Meanwhile the other camp stays stuck to a great extent in its own elitism, promising not to bring true democratic participation but rather just to restore the old elitist cabal.
The old elitist cabal was not liberal democracy, of course, but rather lizard democracy; the new cabal said they were humans, and won support on the back of that claim, but have now revealed themselves simply to be another species of lizard.
But the humans all have the vote, and for a lot of them, putting in an actual human is less important than keeping out the wrong lizard.
It’s true that we should act within our sphere of influence - but some have much greater reach, hence greater responsibility. Two billionaires (Gates and Buffet) using their resources to thwart The Heritage Foundation, The Federalist Society and Fox News could do more than millions of other people to defend democracy.
Sociopathic corporations have created an economy where the decent and honest corporations who are successful get bought out and corrupted. So, yeah, there used to be honest corporations, and still lots of community-oriented small businesses that we love; but the unregulated economy has been deeply corrupted. Time for a far more thoroughgoing trust-busting and rewriting of corporate rules -- and while we're at it, taking down the Repugnican supermajority on the Supreme Court (reading their "opinions" is to be aghast at their shallow and dishonest attempts to rationalize truly fanciful points of view. Read the dissents for proper perspective, as the opinions themselves are often mostly Vance-ian word salad).
I like your term "lizard democracy", as in short-circuiting the cerebral cortices. Critics of neoliberalism have referred to it as "inverted totalitarianism" (awkward?), where the actual democratic institutions have been hollowed out into performative imitations. The debate about whether we're a "real" democracy or a republic has been appropriately, if inadequately, answered in our current discussion of public participation turned into consumerism, and the need for people to recognize each other as fellow citizens in the face of incessant right-wing lies and bleatings to polarize, stigmatize, hypocratize, bully, and foreclose meaningful conversation and the kind of active personal responsibility for participating in governing.
I can tell you, as one who works with groups of interested individuals and with legislators to craft, review, critique, and testify on legislation, it ain't easy nor a bowl of cherries, and can be maddening, but it's the only responsible way to stay sharp, flexible, to learn even as we try to clarify. Coupled with public outreach, progress in changing public judgment is as slow as Yankelovich notes, but the essential keel of a proper democracy. The real culprit, if I may be so bold, is the failure to complete the democratic revolution of 1776 by democratizing the economy, yanking it from the jaws of Hayek, Friedman, and sociopathic corporations and turning it into employee-governed public services (see Marjorie Kelly and Gillian Tett). Time to finally complete Reconstruction and rid ourselves of the devil's own Confederacy caste system.
Recall, by the way, the inspiration of the Iroquois longhouse, where the women elders chose the best men to debate the issues of the day down to consensus, and the general consensus among both Europeans and native Americans that natives were robust, articulate, kind, and generous. while the Europeans were thieves, cheaters, liars and stubbornly quarrelsome.
"Lizard democracy" isn't my term; it comes from, of all places, Douglas Adams' "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish":
‘It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…’
‘You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?’
‘No,’ said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, ‘nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.’
‘Odd,’ said Arthur, ‘I thought you said it was a democracy.’
‘I did,’ said Ford. ‘It is.’
‘So,’ said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, ‘why don’t people get rid of the lizards?’
‘It honestly doesn’t occur to them,’ said Ford. ‘They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.’
‘You mean they actually vote for the lizards?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Ford with a shrug, ‘of course.’
‘But,’ said Arthur, going for the big one again, ‘why?’
‘Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,’ said Ford, ‘the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?’
‘What?’
‘I said,’ said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, ‘have you got any gin?’
‘I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.’
Ford shrugged again.
‘Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,’ he said. ‘They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.’
(My own addition to this is that even when it does occur to the people to get rid of the lizards, the people can't agree on which of them should replace the lizards, so the lizards get in anyway.)
Absolutely brilliant article as always. I really just came here to give it a like. But after reading some of the comments, I feel compelled to add, that speaking as an outsider, not from the US, but someone who believes in democracy and thinks America leads (led) the way, I think where you fell down, was giving corporates the rights of citizens, but not the responsibilities. Deregulation and letting the free market run rampant under Reagan, dismantling unions, letting banks do whatever they want... that was a big miss-step. They say consumers can influence corporates, boycott their products etc. But when corporates control the news and the way we communicate with each other, as well as being able to influence government, what hope do we as individuals have? It's too hard. The overwhelming attitude I hear from young people is, why bother? Just leave them to it. No point in getting stressed, I can't do anything. I for one, welcome our corporate overlords.
Democracy (or what we've settled on for a while) just isn't something many Americans are willing to fight for, it seems. Starts at the dinner table. And goes downhill from there.
Again, democracy as we knew it wasn't even that grand to begin with, but it's bye-bye now. Cheers for this piece. 🙏
In the conversation you, Mike had with Vlad Vexler today, which was very helpful, you talked about political rough seas. Austen's novel 'Persuasion' features a sea captain, Captain Wentworth. Set in the early 1800's, one of its themes is the persuasive power of competence in people. What Austen does in her novel is call the reader's attention to what Austen herself must have concluded: competence is persuasion and persuasion is competence.
All of this still applies for normal folks not part of the cult. If the person is all in on Maga, in my experience arguing in bad faith is the only kind they know how to do and trying to persuade them is a waste of everybodies time.
I'm a Chomsky "fan", but not an expert. I think he'd be careful about framing "liberal", but he certainly had a lot to say about elites, and our problems are exactly as you and Mike agree -- that elites are too smug to descend to real democracy. The Founders' fears of mobocracy ("populism"?) are met by civics education (hey, where did that go?), and we are in the throes of reconstituting where the hell we can recover that in time (one-by-one, folks, as Mike suggests - you never know)
I've copied this pregnant sentence for wider sharing - obvious but overlooked in the present state of consumerism: "Democracy isn’t a consumer service where you select preferred policies from competing vendors. It’s a participatory responsibility that demands the hard work of persuasion, coalition-building, and engagement across difference."
I think even there part of the issue is the question of what constitutes "real" democracy.
Is it just voting for legislative representatives (or political parties), in a free and fair election? Then plenty of places have real democracy, but that runs into the problem of the potential for lizard democracy.
Is it the people as a whole voting directly on major issues? That would be how some define it, but that too has its problems, such as worries about a tyranny of the majority trampling even over constitutional safeguards. "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates; every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." (Federalist No. 55) (And even aside from that, direct democracy has failure states such as were seen with the Brexit referendum, or the Australian monarchy referendum.)
Perhaps it is the Landsgemeinde seen in some Swiss cantons to this day, but by my understanding that has the same worries as secret-ballot direct democracy, only now it is a public vote (closer to what Federalist No. 55 warned of, I think; at that time the secret ballot was a far-off innovation). As the macabre observation goes, democracy is two wolves and a chicken voting on dinner.
And perhaps it is participatory democracy, but often it feels in this political environment that the consultation is done merely for show, and often at one remove. A recent initiative in my country saw the government consult not with the affected people directly, but rather have advocacy groups consult with the people, and then consulted with the advocacy groups. This insulated the government from direct popular input, because while any individual citizen might only ever have one chance to confront a Cabinet minister, the advocacy groups were worried about retaining access and thus tempered their feedback. The final proposal fell far, far short of even what advocacy groups recommended; public input online (so not in person, where dialogue could be held) was generally negative toward it, but no changes of significant substance were made (if anything, the proposal was made worse). The final set of online consultations had many contributors outright accuse the government of conducting a quiet genocide against the group they were purporting to help--feedback which no Cabinet minister would have been willing to hear, and have to answer, in person, I am quite sure. The government's final set of answers to the submissions did not even address the point.
So what is "real" democracy? I think that is a very difficult question to answer, and different people will have different--and often seemingly incompatible--definitions of it.
Our Founders were very clear in not wanting a real Democracy. Instead they laid the foundations for what would evolve to be a representative Democratic Republic with checks and balances. They also did not envision nor desire political parties , and the modern corporation did not yet exist. However, it worked fairly well until SCOTUS ruled corporate spending on elections/political issues was the equivalent of Free Speech starting in 1978. After that instead on representing constituents politicians and the parties represented corporate interests. We became a Corporatocracy
That was somewhat my point. Because of the dangers inherent in direct democracy, it is hardly unreasonable to say that it isn't a "real" democracy. (If you leave everything up to a vote, including who gets to vote, then any temporary majority could permanently exclude from voting a temporarily disfavoured minority.)
So then what is a "real" democracy? As I said, I think that is a very difficult question.
"Democracy" here is about cultural values and liberty, not simply a direct means of voting for government.
Sadly I am coming to the realization many Americans no longer care about Democracy, especially those under the age of 40 since after all, by the time a 40 year old hit 15 in 2000 our Democracy has been a shit show. They don't remember the good times when we had a functional albeit imperfect Democracy where voters demands were not trumped by corporate $$$.
And Americans of all ages seem less interested in the truth and more interested in that which confirms their biases, so they seek out influencers who tell them what they want to hear. Many are simply incapable of distinguishing what is false and what is true and no longer try. The information space has been flooded with so much crap its overwhelming.
Seriously heady times. I opened the Casino this morning and donated 15K to subversive nonprofits who work for the marginalized under the threat of imprisonment for sponsoring terrorism because the demonization of DEI is now being encoded into law and policy across this fair land. I love it when the Casino opens every morning.🥰
I ❤️ the Casino.
I ❤️ Democracy
Don’t you?
Democracy in Action vs.
Democracy in AKTION4
This piece reminded me of Chomsky's critique of modern liberalism. It's been a while since I heard it (this was back in 2018 or so), so I may misrepresent it somewhat.
What he argued is that liberalism has manifested itself as a cabal of elites. Those elites disagree on many things, but there is one thing on which they do agree: that they are the ones fit to govern, and while the occasional rabble-rouser may be allowed into the legislatures, they aren't to be allowed to exercise any more power than any other ordinary legislator (and, if possible, should be sidelined).
The role of the people in this implementation of liberal democracy, then, is not to have actual influence over policy; it is to consider the competing proposals of the various factions of the governing cabal and choose between them periodically. True participatory democracy is anathema to this vision of liberal democracy.
What happened in 2016 in the United States was that both parties faced a populist insurgency, the Republican Party with Donald Trump, and the Democratic Party with Bernie Sanders. The insurgency was successful in the former case and failed in the latter (and failed again four years later). Rage at the elite cabal then propelled the successful insurgent to an election victory on the back of support from places that had felt as though the policies of those elites had failed them.
Of course, the insurgency has in turn metastasised into its own elitist cabal with different criteria for inclusion while still attempting to broadcast the populist message. Meanwhile the other camp stays stuck to a great extent in its own elitism, promising not to bring true democratic participation but rather just to restore the old elitist cabal.
The old elitist cabal was not liberal democracy, of course, but rather lizard democracy; the new cabal said they were humans, and won support on the back of that claim, but have now revealed themselves simply to be another species of lizard.
But the humans all have the vote, and for a lot of them, putting in an actual human is less important than keeping out the wrong lizard.
Ah yes, Chomsky the tankie. Chomsky who signed the Harpers letter. Chomsky the linguist.
It’s true that we should act within our sphere of influence - but some have much greater reach, hence greater responsibility. Two billionaires (Gates and Buffet) using their resources to thwart The Heritage Foundation, The Federalist Society and Fox News could do more than millions of other people to defend democracy.
Persuasion is a difficult task. This being a philosophy blog, you should consider a follow up on using Socratic Method to get your neighbor to think.
Sociopathic corporations have created an economy where the decent and honest corporations who are successful get bought out and corrupted. So, yeah, there used to be honest corporations, and still lots of community-oriented small businesses that we love; but the unregulated economy has been deeply corrupted. Time for a far more thoroughgoing trust-busting and rewriting of corporate rules -- and while we're at it, taking down the Repugnican supermajority on the Supreme Court (reading their "opinions" is to be aghast at their shallow and dishonest attempts to rationalize truly fanciful points of view. Read the dissents for proper perspective, as the opinions themselves are often mostly Vance-ian word salad).
I like your term "lizard democracy", as in short-circuiting the cerebral cortices. Critics of neoliberalism have referred to it as "inverted totalitarianism" (awkward?), where the actual democratic institutions have been hollowed out into performative imitations. The debate about whether we're a "real" democracy or a republic has been appropriately, if inadequately, answered in our current discussion of public participation turned into consumerism, and the need for people to recognize each other as fellow citizens in the face of incessant right-wing lies and bleatings to polarize, stigmatize, hypocratize, bully, and foreclose meaningful conversation and the kind of active personal responsibility for participating in governing.
I can tell you, as one who works with groups of interested individuals and with legislators to craft, review, critique, and testify on legislation, it ain't easy nor a bowl of cherries, and can be maddening, but it's the only responsible way to stay sharp, flexible, to learn even as we try to clarify. Coupled with public outreach, progress in changing public judgment is as slow as Yankelovich notes, but the essential keel of a proper democracy. The real culprit, if I may be so bold, is the failure to complete the democratic revolution of 1776 by democratizing the economy, yanking it from the jaws of Hayek, Friedman, and sociopathic corporations and turning it into employee-governed public services (see Marjorie Kelly and Gillian Tett). Time to finally complete Reconstruction and rid ourselves of the devil's own Confederacy caste system.
Recall, by the way, the inspiration of the Iroquois longhouse, where the women elders chose the best men to debate the issues of the day down to consensus, and the general consensus among both Europeans and native Americans that natives were robust, articulate, kind, and generous. while the Europeans were thieves, cheaters, liars and stubbornly quarrelsome.
"Lizard democracy" isn't my term; it comes from, of all places, Douglas Adams' "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish":
‘It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…’
‘You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?’
‘No,’ said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, ‘nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.’
‘Odd,’ said Arthur, ‘I thought you said it was a democracy.’
‘I did,’ said Ford. ‘It is.’
‘So,’ said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, ‘why don’t people get rid of the lizards?’
‘It honestly doesn’t occur to them,’ said Ford. ‘They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.’
‘You mean they actually vote for the lizards?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Ford with a shrug, ‘of course.’
‘But,’ said Arthur, going for the big one again, ‘why?’
‘Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,’ said Ford, ‘the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?’
‘What?’
‘I said,’ said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, ‘have you got any gin?’
‘I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.’
Ford shrugged again.
‘Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,’ he said. ‘They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.’
(My own addition to this is that even when it does occur to the people to get rid of the lizards, the people can't agree on which of them should replace the lizards, so the lizards get in anyway.)
Sociopathic corporations. Is there any other kind?
Prove me wrong.
Democracy is a right. But it also is a duty.
love the comment about democracy being the teenager at the table working to be heard
The “Citizens United” decision was the beginning of the end. It MUST be reversed or we are permanently fucked.
Well said.
Absolutely brilliant article as always. I really just came here to give it a like. But after reading some of the comments, I feel compelled to add, that speaking as an outsider, not from the US, but someone who believes in democracy and thinks America leads (led) the way, I think where you fell down, was giving corporates the rights of citizens, but not the responsibilities. Deregulation and letting the free market run rampant under Reagan, dismantling unions, letting banks do whatever they want... that was a big miss-step. They say consumers can influence corporates, boycott their products etc. But when corporates control the news and the way we communicate with each other, as well as being able to influence government, what hope do we as individuals have? It's too hard. The overwhelming attitude I hear from young people is, why bother? Just leave them to it. No point in getting stressed, I can't do anything. I for one, welcome our corporate overlords.
Democracy (or what we've settled on for a while) just isn't something many Americans are willing to fight for, it seems. Starts at the dinner table. And goes downhill from there.
Again, democracy as we knew it wasn't even that grand to begin with, but it's bye-bye now. Cheers for this piece. 🙏
In the conversation you, Mike had with Vlad Vexler today, which was very helpful, you talked about political rough seas. Austen's novel 'Persuasion' features a sea captain, Captain Wentworth. Set in the early 1800's, one of its themes is the persuasive power of competence in people. What Austen does in her novel is call the reader's attention to what Austen herself must have concluded: competence is persuasion and persuasion is competence.
All of this still applies for normal folks not part of the cult. If the person is all in on Maga, in my experience arguing in bad faith is the only kind they know how to do and trying to persuade them is a waste of everybodies time.