US Liberal

[ydoaPs]

I'm not sure how much of this can be bias from the polling source, because one of the polls is in a paper owned by Murdoch.

[Marat]

These polls make a significant point, which is that if you measure the extent to which America is a 'democratic' state in substantive terms -- that is, by whether the policies chosen by the governors are those the people want -- rather than merely formally -- that is, by whether there are occasionally elections -- the answer is overwhelmingly clear: America is not a true democracy, but only poses as such. The democratic illusion is created by having an elaborate process of voting which fails to address or discuss substantive issues, but instead just focuses on idiotic pseudo-issues such as which candidate was really born in Kenya or who had the more outrageous love affair. With such a deliberately elaborate and foolish process, sufficient 'smoke and mirrors' are erected to disguise the absence of real democratic choice and distract public attention from genuine issues.

[jackson33]

US Liberal about budget

 

I'm not sure how much of this can be bias from the polling source, because one of the polls is in a paper owned by Murdoch. [/Quote]

 

ydoaPs; First and foremost, I disagree with the narrations summations. Aside from indicating the ignorance of the American Voter (I agree) he has NOT illustrated the liberal concept of "fiscal responsibility", social justice opposed to national defense, as an example.

 

Second, surviving politically seems to rule today and politicians in general, should not be ignorant and are just not making any sense, either party. Republicans are out there preaching some very minor cuts in the current 3.8T4Budget with a 1.65T$ deficit, whether it be 60B$ cuts in this year budget (ends Oct. 1st, 2011 or 100B$ cuts in the 2012 proposed Executive budget or more importantly the potential of trillion dollar deficits over years, not including interest. The Democrats then seemingly want to continue spending in Social Programs, controlling Home Loans, Financial policy, oil policy, paying the cost for green technology and promoting their single payer Healthcare system, which briefly will double the budget and deficits by 2014, IMO.

 

As a Conservative, the actual antonym for Liberal, I do agree a great deal can be cut from the Defense Budget, though it's one item the Federal should be their concern and something has to be cut in ALL entitlement programs. It may be means testing at a very low dollar starting point, a substantial increase in Co-Payment for Medicare, cutting any inflation increases for years to come and we all know inflation has picked up, but it has to happen and happen soon. This nonsense of doing things 10 to 50 years down the road, won't help.

[lemur]

These polls make a significant point, which is that if you measure the extent to which America is a 'democratic' state in substantive terms -- that is, by whether the policies chosen by the governors are those the people want -- rather than merely formally -- that is, by whether there are occasionally elections -- the answer is overwhelmingly clear: America is not a true democracy, but only poses as such.

You have to stop assuming that Nazi-like majoritarian authoritarianism is the ultimate state of democracy. Democracy doesn't give people/majorities what they want. It gives them the ability to represent and express their will publicly and from their their ideas get checked and balanced into a form that escapes authoritarianism. American democracy is overflowing with authoritarian ideologies and interests, but the idea is that these gain less unilateral power because of public expression accompanied by checking and balancing.

 

The democratic illusion is created by having an elaborate process of voting which fails to address or discuss substantive issues, but instead just focuses on idiotic pseudo-issues such as which candidate was really born in Kenya or who had the more outrageous love affair. With such a deliberately elaborate and foolish process, sufficient 'smoke and mirrors' are erected to disguise the absence of real democratic choice and distract public attention from genuine issues.

What these kinds of politics do is to disrupt the idea that democracy is a smooth-running process of electing public managers and letting them do their work. I recently watched an interview where Robbie Williams claimed to be able to be a better president than GWBush because anyone could. You can't empower people to that level of self-confidence in their own leadership abilities if everyone is busy humbling themselves before leaders they perceive as great to super-human levels. You're not going to hear Robbie Williams say he could be a better leader than someone like, idk, Gandhi, because he probably has to much reverence for him and would put himself down in comparison. US democracy encourages individual expression instead of subjugation, though it allows that too even if just to subject it to deconstruction.

 

 

[Marat]

But I would argue that the way American democracy works it encourages self-subjugation by having an electoral process so far removed from a serious discussion of the issues that people wind up choosing policies which substantively cannot possibly represent their real interests. If people cast their ballot by the advice of astrologers, by casting dice, or by consulting a ouija board, does that still allow their country to be classified as a 'democracy' genuinely ruled by the 'will of the people'? The people's will can be so uneducated that it is really just the will of the reigning ideology imposed on the society by its economic ruling class, which measures the effectiveness of its ideological indoctrination of the public every four years by holding a rather shallow ritual called an 'election,' which the masses are clueless enough to take seriously.

 

Jefferson thought that the solution to this problem was to provide free public education to the electorate, but now the issues of the modern state have become sufficiently complex that the free education generally provided is inadequate to raise the public to the level to represent its own interests in the democratic process. The Nazi legal theorist, Carl Schmitt, who has recently come back into popularity, pointed out that the person or institution which has the authority to educate the public can inculcate any ideology in the public mind that it wants, so the educator has to become a dictator, and this then makes democracy meaningless, since democracy would be meaningless in any case without an educated electorate.

 

But if elections then must fail to represent what the people really want because of the combination of Jefferson's and Schmitt's insights, then how is government of, by, and for the people to be secured? Perhaps we should have a principle which is guaranteed to benefit the majority of people governing the state rather than elections. Such a principle might be: adopt whatever policies bring about the greatest material good for the greatest number of people, realizing that the human good achieved by answering the most basic human needs for decent food, shelter, housing, employment, health, and leisure is many times more valuable than achieving any luxuries.

 

I think you could argue that a society whose end result substantively achieved the greatest good for the greatest number would be more truly democratic than one which had elections which produced results which never achieved the greatest good for the greatest number.