It's not particularly fun to get old. But for those of us lucky enough to have a comfortable home, sweet, patient partner, awesome doggie, regular visits from (healthy) kinder, sufficient income to live on, and all the other Maslow stuff, it isn't too awful--especially if one's health allows for continuing research in areas of interest, places to publish rants, working synthesizers, people to play music with, etc.
But, but, but...
For at least the past decade, my main academic interest has been democratic theory: what makes a system good or bad, what can be done to improve a mediocre one, and so on. The point is that I have come to realize in my dotage what many of my readers likely have known for many years. It is this:
While I suppose that a return to something like the “democracy” we had prior to Trump remains (distantly) possible, I have begun to believe pretty firmly that that no move to a more authentic or radical democracy in which each vote and person is treated equally and minorities receive appropriate voice is preposterous, an utter impossibility. And this is not just in the U.S. but everywhere that doesn’t have something that at least approximates some sort of fair majoritarianism at present (if there be any such jurisdictions).
I mean, various wealthy elites plus Madison-recognized cross-cutting obstacles of size and diversity have worked to keep something like a liberal republic in place for a couple hundred years in the U.S. and several similar “democracies,”but because of the growth of the internet, the multiplication of media sources, AI, the complete sorting of the two parties, etc., etc., it is hard to see how any future flourishing of democracy could be anything but a silly dream.
Here's why.
People of all stripes have items that are particularly important to them—say a "fair" distribution of wealth, or white Christian supremacy, or the exclusivity of a single tax on land, or a woman’s unrestricted right to choose an abortion, or complete deregulation of medicine or currency, or whatever the hell.
Stuff like that is what groups most want. You can just ask them and they will tell you. Maybe it's free health care or free guns. Maybe it's something to do with gendered bathrooms or trans athletics.
Some of these groups may join with others to make up political parties. But getting more democracy cannot be included in their bundle of desiderata since each group can be expected to be OK with the idea of additional self-rule only if they expect that change to promote their more precious goals. And, of course, it will not do so as often as it will.
That's why the two parties in the U.S. go back and forth on things like the Senate Filibuster: they like it when it helps them stop laws or other changes they don't want, and they dislike it when it helps their opponents do the same thing. That it is ALWAYS essentially undemocratic is irrelevant. What's what's most important is winning.
Now, I don't deny that there could be a party devoted to real democracy (though perhaps the “Democratic Party” should not be its name). Maybe FairVote or CES will start one. But such a party can succeed only in such times and places where it receives the approbation of those with alternative primary goals. And these other groups will always remove their support for the (real) democracy party whenever majoritarianism seems to them to present a barrier rather than a quicker road to what they REALLY want.
I’m afraid that this means that whatever electoral reform is your favorite—RCV, Approval, MMP, multi-party parliamentarianism, or even something really cuckoo, say an imagined eccentricity like “Only Unanimity Now!”—can never succeed in any significant area for any substantial period of time.
There is absolutely NO ROAD for any such group...which I suppose is why the old "progressives" and "pops" never made anything but short-term, limited area headway with their attempted reforms.
In sum, you may eventually get your Nozickian anarchy or your Trtotskian version of Marxism or your Flat Eartherism, or your militaristic MAGA homogeneity, or your Sharia, or even your Georgeism (though I really doubt the last one), but, tragically, what you will never, never get is real democracy, for that would require a majority of the people to accept that they may never get what they most desire.
Ah well. If it's any consolation to you (it is to me, certainly), I intend to keep writing about this stuff anyhow. I mean, it remains diverting. And heck--without my studies I might never have finally learned THIS!
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