What if Our Democracy Just Isn't Up to the Modern Challenge?
Democracy rose to new levels with the birth of America and the judicious insights of the American Founders and much of the world rose along with it. There were oversights and mistakes on that climb, to be sure, but it introduced a new potential to the world that signified that average people were capable enough of selecting visionary and efficient leaders to ensure their future development.
That was then. Now, we might have lived long enough to see that great nation initiate the demise of the very form of government that it built its legacy upon.
In many ways, it’s not about Donald Trump, Left vs. Right, or ideology against incrementalism. Ultimately the very essence and guarantee of democracy is the rule of law. It’s all we’ve known from the beginning. When it came to politics, electoral contests were held, divisions and tempers abounded, and selections were made. And when the time came, political power was transferred in ways that brought about far less struggle or anarchy than many imagined. And at the root of it all lay the capacity to trust.
What we have now south of the border is an attack on the rule of law that no one thought possible. There’s no need to go into the details in this post because we can watch it 24/7 if we wish on cable news. It has reached the point where one recent poll says that only 19% of Americans now believe that their government will do what’s right.
Western democracy was always a construct that could reveal a tendency to turbulence. Frequent elections meant that politicians had to always pander to voters if they sought some kind of permanence or legacy. In recent years that reach for political survival sought to solicit votes in ways that ignored long-term consequences. Every election most politicians speak in aspirational tones yet seek to buy voters with boutique commitments that promise them small benefits in the here and now. And often enough those politicians are rewarded by electorates who shut their eyes to the future.
How else to explain the “joined at the hip” relationship between Donald Trump and the Republican Party? Though most Americans express misgivings about their current leader, his promises for making the country great again or bringing jobs back to America have induced enough political support that Republican politicians have had to make a choice between riding that precarious wave in hopes of victory next year or taking a stand against a leader who has flouted numerous laws, defied the rule and responsibilities of Congress, and literally talks to the media everyday about how it’s okay to dig up dirt on opponents or break elections laws if it means possible victory. Trump has a point when he says that previous progress administrations did little to stop the slide toward a globalism that stripped jobs from the nation, created a financial kleptocracy, and left most of the nation sliding backward into economic penury. Yet the President himself has been a poster child for that kind of culture and has made himself millions on the ruin of others.
Canada is nowhere near such a gross violation of democratic law, but its citizens and politicians are dangerously close towards craving comfort in the short-term at the risk of stability – cultural and economic – for the longer game. Our citizens are a fickle sort who wish to be seen as environmental, tolerant, peace-loving and generous and yet increasingly vote for politicians and parties that merely tinker with climate change, cut back on foreign aid, use lies and innuendos in their campaign strategies, and who show little inclination to invest in those structural projects that will stabilize our future – carbon reduction, public transport, affordable housing, more meaningful employment. There is movement in such directions, but not the sacrificial kind required to equitably safeguard life for our children and grandchildren. To ask for that kind of sacrifice from citizens would be to risk electoral suicide and that is not an option for most politicians. And, so, they merely pander to the myopia of the citizenry.
This all leaves every electoral contest less trusted than the last and turns such democratic rights of passage into something more like advertising campaigns rather than the stability and hegemony of the nation.
We are now witnessing the hollowed-out version of democracy in the United States in ways that represent the worst kind of politics in the developing world. Britain, too, is watching the demise of its historic parliamentary system in real time, every minute of the day, as politicians play for power instead of purpose and principle.
This is increasingly becoming our modern version of democracy. Designed to bring peace and prosperity when it works, it rarely brings on some better system when it fails. Instead, we get democratic dysfunction, continual voter dissatisfaction and the loss of hope. Only by restoring trust can our political architecture be salvaged – trust in our leaders, our institutions, and one another. But it is a trust that must be earned and sacrificed for, and that begins by the returning to the rule of law and the rejection of those who defy it.