If not democracy, then what is the answer to your hyperbolic dystopia?I think very few commentators, be they internet randoms such as ITT or professional journalists have managed to answer the question that hides within all the vitriol.....what happens to democracy when people no longer believe in it?
You can see from other parts of the world, the Jan 6 playbook at work....soon to get a massive software update I'm sure.....wherein electorates simply question the validity of the democratic process if it delivers an unfavourable result.
Right now, this moment in the world, when we have a staggering capacity to communicate, verify, authorise and educate.....we seem to be rushing headlong into pure anarchic ignorance on steroids.....not just unable or unwilling to accept or understand anything different or confronting, but violently against the simple IDEA of there being difference.
It is almost as if the range and variety of difference in the modern world has induced a very short-tempered "choice weariness", where many people simply want LESS choice about things.....be that policy, humanity, employment, whatever.
The poster here who has stated that the Democrats helped create Trump is spot on. And to reflect on why, think about this - I'm sure many of you know somebody who has stated that all politicians are full of shit and that the political system in Australia is a gravy train etc etc. This is where it starts, when we lose faith in the elected official being able to deliver what was promised. I'm sure many of you share some of that same sarcastic dismissal when we hear a public official talk a good game.....because we have all seen it and heard it too many times.
Decades of democratically elected governments have laid the foundation for Trump's right wing insanity, because they have allowed this government-sponsored insouciance to pervade the corridors of power, be that in Canberra, Downing Street or Washington. Politicians are held to the LEAST account, because so much of what they do happens beyond public scrutiny and they employ PR spin doctors to deal with the shit storms that linger.
This is why people are losing faith, not just in people or positions, but in the entire system of democracy - it is beyond corrupt as far as I can see. I have no faith in any politician of any political party. I refuse to vote any more. I refuse to participate in a society of smoke and mirrors, where lies are told as truth and our elected officials and corporate elites get paid from the blood, sweat and tears of the working class.
I have said in another post ITT that it makes no difference now who wins or loses next week - the damage has been done, the genie is out of the bottle. Unless Harris can reverse the neo-conservative policy of the Democrats, who are as left wing as Peter Dutton, then this simmering discontent will continue to fester - because the democratic institution has been shown to allow and reward graft, greed and abuses of power, irrespective of the ideology of those in control.
So when you think the dog's bed is full of fleas, you burn the whole ****ing bed. And that is what I fear is happening to western democracies now - they have become the corrupt Senate from Rome and Star Wars.
This isn't about freedom of speech or expression, racism, sexism, fascism, socialism...because these things only matter as discussion points when you have a cosy fire and a full stomach in a safe space. Many folks don't have those things, because for them it is purely survival now. And when you are in survival mode, you don't give a shit about any of that. If something is an obstacle or a barrier or that you perceive as a threat to your survival, you don't negotiate with it, you don't try to analyse or understand it - you neutralise it in any way you can.
And Trump's army of drooling fanatics are only too happy to ensure his and their survival at the expense of the last vestiges of democratic process, because for many of them, they have witnssed their lives getting worse and the promises made by a blue or red government are like morning fog. So they don't WANT democracy any more. The Democrats aren't the enemy....DEMOCRACY is the enemy.