The ultimate refuge of a person whose ideas aren’t working is that the failing implementations of their ideas are invalid
“This is not real capitalism”
“China is not real socialism”
And, the hardest one to swallow.
“The us is not a real democracy”

I propose, in fact, the us IS a real democracy. But that a democracy elected by racists will be racist in character. A democracy elected by a cruel and ignorant population will be cruel and ignorant. Adding more democracy wont fix all that.

There is this sort of intellectual game we are playing when we talk about a democratic republic, wherein we act like elected representatives do not represent the popular will when they make immoral or unethical decisions. These decisions are never held as the public’s fault.

So if a literal king picks a corrupt minister to run his government, and everyone knows he is corrupt, and the king just ignores it despite ample evidence, isn’t that the King’s fault? Yet, if the people of Kentucky keep re-electing McConnell, we say “oh, they were deceived.”

We blame the war in Iraq on Bush and on congress, but at the time the war had broad public support. Bush did deceive people, but ultimately the American public did support that war, collectively. Bush was arguably implementing the will of the people.

Voltaire once said “to see who rules you, look to who you can’t criticize” and the fact is... I know we are a democracy because it is political suicide for any politician to criticize the public the way we criticize our politicians.

But as we the public never, as a group, feel collectively responsible for the consequences of our decisions, as we primarily blame our ministers for our mistakes, and as we are immune from criticism, we are kind of doomed to force our ministers to make bad policy decisions.

There are arguments here about the electoral college distorting results and about paid influence operations... but those tools work for ministers and lobbying groups in autocracies too, it’s just that in an autocracy you only need to manipulate a small group of people.

I’m not arguing against democracy as a form of government... but we frequently treat the will of the people as somehow infallible, as a French courtier might treat the will of Louis XIV. I argue it is not. The crimes and mistakes a king might commit, a democracy can also commit

good governance in a democracy requires the same kind of dedication and thoughtful decision making as a monarch must exercise. If we are voting on autopilot or don’t take government seriously or don’t understand the consequences of COURSE our ministers are going to become corrupt

At that point we become a rubber stamp for the political agendas of our ministers, like so many unfit rulers before us. Our country descends into crisis, and it is because we are as a group making bad decisions about who should be minister and what policies we want.

We’re off sinking billions of dollars into a largely useless wall because it’s sexy and it sounds good to enough of us. The people who want it care enough about immigration to fund it, but not enough about immigration or foreign policy to understand why it’s a bad idea.