{"id":391,"date":"2015-03-28T20:42:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-29T01:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=391"},"modified":"2015-03-30T14:47:30","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T19:47:30","slug":"democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/03\/28\/democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current flare up of election day sabotage<\/a> in Nigeria reminds me of the doubts I hold concerning the implementation of democracy<\/em> in many societies.\u00a0 It has to do with allegiances<\/em>.\u00a0 Humans tend to group together, both as a matter of survival and being social beasts, and to retain these social attachments as a long term, semi-exclusive arrangement, which is to say that we may have a number of these relationships, but rarely more than one of any given type.\u00a0 For example, the sports fan with more than one allegiance to a football team is rare.<\/p>\n

These categories are also hierarchical<\/em>.\u00a0 A sports team allegiance could be considered to be at the bottom of the pile, as it’s a rare sports nut who’ll actually put their life on the line for their team: exceptions may be found, but they merely prove the rule that some humans have a really large standard deviation.\u00a0 But consider these categories, ranked hierarchically (Citizen A):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Religion<\/li>\n
  2. Country<\/li>\n
  3. Tribe<\/li>\n
  4. Family<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Or, to drive the point home (Citizen B):<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Country<\/li>\n
    2. Family<\/li>\n
    3. Religion<\/li>\n
    4. Tribe<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      And now apply them in the context of an election.\u00a0 Who does A vote for?\u00a0 Well, if he’s a Zoroastrian, he might vote for the Zoroastrian in the race, as a matter of course – not when all else is equal, but as the most important factor to consider.\u00a0 B, on the other hand, holding country as the most important allegiance, might evaluate all of the candidates and select the one exhibiting the best skills at governance (which is quite the topic in itself), or perhaps advocating policies B thinks best suited for the country, disregarding the religion or tribe of the candidates.<\/p>\n

      We can construct some tentative hierarchies.\u00a0 An American independent voter, such as myself:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Family<\/li>\n
      2. Country<\/li>\n
      3. State, maybe<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        I fear I’m not very tribal, actually.\u00a0 Now, a party zealot:<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Political Party<\/li>\n
        2. Country<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          I don’t point fingers at either party, actually – this is known as voting the party line, a term most of us know quite well.\u00a0 Here’s a party loyalist:<\/p>\n

          1. Political Party
          \n1.1 Country<\/p>\n

          Here might be an Iraqi voter:<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Tribe<\/li>\n
          2. Religion<\/li>\n
          3. Party<\/li>\n
          4. Country<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            This might also apply to many other voters in countries of dubious democratic nature.\u00a0 It seems to me (and I’m sure many political theorists are way ahead of this simple minded software engineer) that certain hierarchical examples are toxic to the democratic experiment, while others are conducive.\u00a0 I’m not a big fan of the party zealot, but at least I do not think they’re toxic; the party loyalist will actually listen to arguments and occasionally cross over.\u00a0 Being an independent myself (I voted for Jesse Ventura for MN governor, and I would have done so again if he’d run for re-election), I think the independent’s hierarchy is close to ideal – what is best for the country, in whatever terms seem most important, is the top priority.\u00a0 Religion doesn’t even enter into it for me, unless I feel the religious inclinations of the candidate may have an undue negative influence on the candidate’s actions.<\/p>\n

            Given those thoughts, I have to wonder at how accurate it is to designate a number of countries as having reached the gold standard of being democratic.\u00a0 Those countries in which most of the voters are of the profile, above, for an Iraqi voter, may be regarded with skepticism, because allegiances to tribe and religion are difficult to break once they’ve become set, and if the penalties for breaking those allegiances are severe, well, then the contest is not decided in the general election, but in the nominating contest for the one entity controlling more votes than the others – assuming it’s a winner take all format.\u00a0 This suggests that democracy will not flourish until the old hierarchies are sufficiently broken to permit citizens to put heterogeneous country above the demands of other institutions.<\/p>\n

            United States of America<\/strong><\/p>\n

            This leads naturally to considering the origins of the United States.\u00a0 The colonists who eventually established the country were often outcasts: Pilgrims who felt, or were, oppressed; the economically disadvantaged who sought a new country to begin again; criminals whose punishment was exile and often indenturement; slaves, without a prayer of returning to their homes.\u00a0 These are not people with unbreakable allegiances to much else than their religion. And even that, over a generation or two of exposure to other modes of thought, proves not to be impervious. While the Amish and a few other groups persist, we’re hard put to find surviving members of other groups such as Shakers, Friends, Pilgrims; and the larger sects, while having trends for voting one way or another, are not normally known for a en masse<\/em> voting habit.<\/p>\n

            But I think another factor also comes into play: the idea of justice, or fair play.\u00a0 The stricture that all are equal before the law is a reflection of the idea of fair play.\u00a0 Dogs and monkeys have this down cold<\/a>; when we implement it, then we must admit the concept that we do not cheat at elections.\u00a0 Not that it doesn’t occur, but it is considered to be such a minor affair that it doesn’t swing elections any longer, although of course Richard Nixon might have grounds to disagree<\/a>.<\/p>\n

            So I shudder every time I hear we’re “putting boots on the ground” to install democracy in some benighted country lacking same; our government “professionals” don’t really seem to have a clue as to the prerequisites of making a democracy work.\u00a0 Where are we going this time to fail, once again?\u00a0 Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti … who’s next to join our list of failures?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            The current flare up of election day sabotage in Nigeria reminds me of the doubts I hold concerning the implementation of democracy in many societies.\u00a0 It has to do with allegiances.\u00a0 Humans tend to group together, both as a matter of survival and being social beasts, and to retain these \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}