Notes From Underground (#5)

What Is Democracy?

Photo by Fred Moon on Unsplash

What is democracy?

Too often, we think about it as something removed from our daily lives. Something—with all of its talk about “the rule of law,” “institutions,” and “independent media”—that seems like empty rhetoric when you struggle to pay bills or put food on the table.

I understand. I understand that one reason Donald Trump won is that people’s frustration simply boiled over, and they thought that America needed a person with a whip of cords to overturn the tables, drive out the money changers, and bring some much-needed change to Washington.

So I ask again, what is democracy?

Democracy is the right to grumble about high egg prices. Democracy is the right to complain when the local power company overcharges you, or when your representative doesn’t respond to your letters or phone calls.

It is the right to make fun of our politicians, or mutter that they don’t care about people like you and me. It is the right to go out and march out in the afternoon without disappearing in the night. It is the right to speak your mind without looking over your shoulder, or without worrying that people you thought were your friends will rat you out to the higher-ups.

Is it “the right to be wrong?” Perhaps. Yet more importantly, it is the right to try to be right—and to try to do the right thing—without someone pressuring you to give up your principles just to “get by.”

If you lose democracy, you lose the power to complain. You lose the ability to stand up and say enough is enough. So that when promises are made and promises are not kept, and when you suffer while the powerful drink champagne and eat caviar at fancy parties only they can attend, there is very little you can do to stop them.

That may explain why Trump seems to like Putin so much. While Russia goes to war to kill and maim for Putin’s dreams of empire, Putin himself hops from mansion to mansion and from yacht to yacht with his buddies. While Russia’s masses huddle in trenches abroad, or struggle to meet their basic needs at home, Putin and his rich friends enjoy a life of almost unimaginable luxury.

And who can complain? Not the people of Russia, that’s for sure. Unless they want to go to jail.

Remember than when Donald Trump punishes the Associated Press for not going along with his “Gulf of America” game. Remember that when he and his cronies punish free speech under the cover of “cracking down on anti-Semitism.” Remember that when today, in the Department of Justice building, Trump calls judges who ruled against him “scum,” says that media criticizing him should be “illegal,” and targets by name lawyers and law firms who opposed his agenda. Today, he gave his best shot at weaponizing the Justice Department, the very same thing he falsely accused Biden of doing (remember that it was Biden’s Justice Department that prosecuted his own son).

Let me ask a simple question: why does a man who has seemingly won it all sound so bitter and spiteful?

Because winning is not enough. It was never enough. He wants control, complete control. He wants to bend people to his will, so that he hears nothing more than a chorus of praise behind him. And finally, he wants to conquer & carve up the globe just like Putin & Xi.

What will you get in exchange for all of this? Nothing. Nothing except the crumbs from the big buffet.

Only our belief in government of the people, by the people, and for the people has protected America from becoming like today’s Russia or China. We the people have that power—not the laws, not the institutions, not even the judges. Democracy is only as powerful as our belief in it.

In the name of democracy, use that power. Fight for your right to complain, to grumble, to mock your elected officials, & to take to the streets. “In the name of democracy, let us all unite!”