"The Heck With Democracy"

Western politicians are scrambling relentlessly to make sense of what has happened to their respective democratic legacies. I spoke with one British diplomat who is all too aware of Reinhold Niebuhr’s observation in his Beyond Tragedy:

One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.”

Has our democratic death begun to make its presence felt? It would seem likely. Our last post (pardon the Freudian slip) referred to certain symptoms already revealing a larger democratic cancer beneath. It’s not only the increase of aspiring politicians refusing to attend campaign debates. These past few years have witnessed the willingness to override contempt of the House charges, the purposeful undermining of committees, attempts to suppress the vote, and an increasingly charged partisanship that has even begun to infest civic levels of government.As citizens we have grown to accept this as status quo. We have used the ineffectiveness of governments to deal with our larger problems as an excuse for failing to pay attention or even vote.More than willing to stoke the fires of our anger have been right-wing radicals who ask us to dumb down, think simple, and suspend rational belief. The greatest threat to our national security in Canada isn’t religious radicalism but an emerging political ideology that seeks to erode and destroy democratic institutions from within. They are happiest when people don’t vote, when class war begins to emerge, when the poor are targeted, when climate change is derided, where evidence-based public policy is mocked, and where political systems become dysfunctional. All of this is taking place in a democracy but that doesn’t make it democratic – at least not as we have known it.The irony of it all is that the extreme right-wing picks up increasing support because they appear to speak in the courage of their convictions. More moderate politicians and their parties scramble to counteract such intrusions by talking about a more humane Canada, a more compassionate government, a more just system of public policy. It's more complex, and for now at least, it doesn’t seem to be working.Sure, media loves this stuff and fails to provide a proper critique of such blindingly simple policies that can’t work. And, yes, politicians become their own worst enemies in their race after the tiny group of swing voters that are left. But the key reason all this is happening is because citizens have taken a pass – in voting, in following public policy debates, even in caring. Their will is now only reflected in polls or in anger. And they are in the process of underwriting a new reality in the history of democracy: whereas the search for justice and transparency inevitably puts limitations on governments and power, citizens have yielded their own hold on power, which inevitably leads to the diminution of the fair society they seek.With each passing election, accountability erodes and transparency recedes. Politicians in the western world, sensing this, grapple with the sheer insanity of it all. They can flirt with proportional representation, grassroots initiatives, or legislated change, but in the end they have lost their voice because no one is listening – or at least not enough citizens to demand a restoration of social justice, fair-minded capitalism, environmental sustainability, or political accountability.Presently a provincial election is underway in Ontario and a number of citizens are upset that some seeking to represent them refuse to face them in public debate venues. They are right to be angry. Yet those refusing to face them are taking a gamble. If it was true that federal Conservative candidates gained power after refusing to be accountable, why not try it provincially? Hopefully this election will find the Progressive Conservatives turning their back on this practice of their federal cousins, but if not it can mean only one thing: they know you don’t care and so why should they care about democratic traditions.Let this be a lighting rod, a litmus test, of the democracy you still believe in. Don’t let them away with it. They are responsible to you, not the other way around. And let the media know that their failure to report such a deplorable practice is merely undermining democracy further. Here’s your chance to fight back for the kind of community you want. Wrestle those political aspirants to the ground who refuse to face you and applaud those who show up even if it’s unpopular.If we can’t rouse ourselves on this single point, then we have assisted in introducing a new kind of political administration in this country. The heck with democracy; it's too much work. And due to our absence, government itself will become our master, despite its moral depravity and lack of solutions. If we’re to get better, we all have to do better.