“We going to build back so much better, you’re going to get tired of building back better. You’re going to say ‘Mr. Biden, please, we can’t keep building back better,’ and I’m gonna say ‘sorry, we have to keep building back better.’ We gotta do it, folks. Gotta do it.” “Democracy” is a spook.
I am philosophically anti-intellectual, but some of these concepts, you really do just need to understand. I am not a post-Hegelian individualist anarchist, but the Max Stirner spooks meme is useful in basic discourse.
Spooks are useful and necessary abstract concepts needed to structure a human social order. Even the most primitive African tribes have spooks, which is how the Catholic Church ultimately decided that they were human beings with souls and not animals (it was a hot topic of debate).
The ability to rationally build abstract thought forms outside of the concrete world is what separates humans from animals and what it means when the Bible says that “man is made in the image of God.” Spooks are a framework through which to shape and improve physical reality.
Here’s the problem with democracy: it is too spooky to be a functional spook. It is a busted spook. It has been abstracted from an abstraction so many times that no one has any idea what it means. For contrast, “freedom” also has structural problems as an abstract, but at least people have some basic agreement that it means “options for individuals.” People disagree with which options people should have, but the basic idea of “the ability to exercise agency” is understood.
“Democracy” means literally anything to anyone. On one end, it means “universal suffrage rights” and on the other end it means “gay sex lessons for kids.” This is always getting mixed up, on purpose, so you get situations where the media and government claim that democracy is about “maximizing voting rights” and then turn around and claim people are “voting against democracy.” If democracy is popular vote, then it is actually impossible to “vote against democracy.”
The bottom line is: no one is willing to offer a definition of this term. At least no one on the left is willing to do so. They prefer to keep it as a nebulous blob of compounded and conflicting abstractions.
What’s more: America was never intended to be a “democracy.” We didn’t have universal suffrage until the late 19th century. Women did not get national universal suffrage rights until 1920 (though that is a separate issue, technically).
Democracy in its most “official” form is outlined by the United Nations in their Universal Declaration of Human Rights, almost none of which are currently associated with the term as it is commonly used by the left. I am against all forms of democracy, as it is always an oligarchy, which always reduces personal freedom. Even in its pure form, the masses will vote away other people’s right and vote away their own rights because the masses are stupid cattle.
But if we talk about “democracy going away” – that means different things to different people. Republicans now try to push the original definitions of democracy, but also say that importing new voters is a violation of democracy. Democrats literally mean that restrictions on abortion and child gay sex, if they were voted for, would destroy democracy.
What that means is that if one side gets their ideal of democracy, the other side loses it. So people’s opinions here are completely irrelevant in any real sense, and the fact that most people in both parties now believe democracy is ending just means that no one is comfortable with the current direction of society.
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