Saddam Hussein

Is democracy right for everyone?

Personally, I think democracy is something like a university degree for a nation. You have to learn it, first. You have to understand why you need it. You have to deserve it, too. You know, Rome wasn’t built in a day. 

Lomonosov Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University

Let’s take the Iraqi case of 2003 as the brightest example. The US has invaded it, bringing down Saddam, no doubt a bad guy of the Middle East. By the way, please remind me of any of the good guys in the region except for Israel. Yeah, take your time. 

The coalition led by the US took down his regime in seconds, handed this poor devil over to the new democratically-elected Iraqi government and was then happily waiting for the peace and democracy to prevail.

Whoops, it didn’t happen.

Instead, we’ve got bloody Shia uprising supported by Iran. It was Sunni fighting Shia elsewhere in this country. We’ve got insurgents in Fallujah and Sadr City, with all its décor such as fatal blasts in Baghdad with hundreds of innocent civilian victims, numerous attacks on the US and government forces, etc. It took many years and even more thousands of lives to bring some stability back there. 

Yep, now it looks OK there. Except for ISIS as, like many experts claim, a direct outcome of it. Though now it seems to be finished. Inshallah.  

Was it worth it? Not sure. Plus, this invasion, I believe, was something that frightened Vladimir Putin to death: he decided that he could be the next one when the US decides to bring some democracy somewhere else. It was exactly after this invasion in 2003 that Putin’s Russia decided that they part their ways with the US, ending-up the ‘strategic partnership with the United States’ declared by the Russian president just two years earlier, in 2001. This turn then led to various (and multiple) negative consequences in Russia such as absence of rule of law, just to mention the most fundamental, the #1 thing. It is now ruled by clans, not by institutions, just like any banana republic down south from Rio Grande. 

For instance, so many people in Russia still don’t understand that the totally corrupt government, including the president, is the direct outcome of no democracy that it just makes me freak. They don’t like what is happening in the country now but still they believe that there is no connection. This is why I think democracy is something like a university degree for a nation. Go to school, kid! 

Getting back to the title question. Yes, universally, democracy will prevail, in the very long run. The democratic countries don’t fight each other and they’re the most effective ones, too. But the world is so different culturally that it would take, for democracy to win, dozens of years for countries like Russia and hundreds of years for places like Syria or China. Remember, Egypt, after bringing down Mubarak, happily elected the Moslem Brothers, failing its test. Tell me now what’s better: the corrupt but secular strongman or the Islamic fanatics? 

You just can’t take a kid from mid-school into his freshman classes. The kid will fuck up. Our Rusuk Blog writer Sergey

But: if a kid wants to enter the university, he’s got to study hard to get there. This is the real thing to talk about: does the kid really want to be a student? Or he’s just going to get some crappie part-time job looking down with envy at big guys driving big nice cars…

 

 

Give me an Atatürk any day..

Democracy for everyone? Not for me; I am a great fan of the benevolent dictator, and I’m not even that sure that some forms of so-called democracy are particularly democratic. 

Take my former place of residence, Jersey – a self-governing Crown dependency. While I was living there, the population of under 100,000 had 52 members of its parliament. Every election time, up to a dozen of them were elected unopposed, because nobody could bother to stand against them. Democratic?

Even in America, more people didn’t vote for Trump than did, but here he is, as annoying as ever. Same for Brexit in Britain. More people didn’t vote to leave Europe, but guess what, off we jolly well go. Democratic? You decide.

Democracy is supposed to be good for everyone, but it doesn’t work like that. Some countries are simply too big, so maybe they need to be broken up into smaller entities – Yugoslavia anyone? 

Anyway, what’s so good about democracy? You could argue that dictators make more mistakes – think Churchill and Roosevelt v Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.

Ultimately, it’s the will of the people making collective decisions. Every entitled person gives their

Ataturk, founder of Turkey
Ataturk, founder of Turkey

opinion through voting. Since all votes are equal, the opinion held by the most members is considered the will of the majority.

But, governing by majority creates minorities – whose interests are then more or less ignored. Combine that with capitalism, and you get what is a typical economy of haves and have-nots.

No, Democracy is not good for everyone. Democratic values are pretty bad news if you have corrupt vested interests and abuse power for personal gain or glory. Like Britain’s Tory party. You can imagine them losing the next election, as they inevitably will, and you can hear the toffs saying: “Good God, they’ve elected a Labour government. The country will never stand for it.” 

And where democracy is in its infancy in any country, you simply get lots of uncontrollable egos among the leaders – they and their parties cannot accept defeat at the polls, or see themselves Roger Baracriticised in the press.

 So, give me an Atatürk any day, and stick democracy up you-know-where, until someone comes up with a system that actually works and is beneficial to all of the people.

 

 

Will the US Remain a Democracy?

Sir Winston correctly pointed out that liberal democracy is the worst form of government; except for all the others. The problem with democracy isn’t democracy, per se, it’s just how incredibly fragile the system is.

Conservative Racist Meme
Conservative Racist Meme

Perhaps you believe I over-state my case? Let’s consider my country, the US, the first modern democracy. My Mother was a Fox News junkie and died absolutely sure the Barack Obama was born in Kenya. This was after a certain orange New York Developer gave the lie up in September, 2016. 

See, in America the rule is that a President must be born in the US. So all these people believe that Obama was never a legitimate President. In essence, Trump supporters believe those evil Democrats highjacked the Republic… nothing short of a liberal coup based on fake news.

Computer programmers say “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” If you can twist the news on main stream media, you can control the democracy. How can you expect anyone to make an informed vote if that person bases his vote on bad information? So, with this in mind I say that democracy is not right for everyone.

At this time, polls say the majority of American’s believe that Trump is not an honest person. As long as that remains the case I believe that democracy is right for the US. The day the Trump can call Megan Markle nasty on tape, then call the tape fake news and the majority of American accept that as fact; then on that day I say democracy is no longer best for the US. 

This is not politics on my part; this is not liberal or conservative. This is simply stating that democracy may no longer be the best form of government in the US if things get further removed from truth. Once alternative facts become real facts, there is only one reason to bother with the charade of democracy: it dupes the mob into believing that they live in a democracy.

Without a fair, critical, and free news media, the people can be told things that are lies and they have no option other than to accept those lies as true. You cannot blame someone for something they don’t know. Photograph of Dean Lewis

This is based on nothing, but I strongly suspect there is a correlation between how much wrong information a nation consumes and how likely it is to be governed by a Strongman or Dictator.