authoritarians of any side deprecate liberal values (ie, individual liberty) & treat the individual as an expendable means to (rather than the nonexpendable ends of) their illiberal agenda
authoritarians of any side deprecate liberal values (ie, individual liberty) & treat the individual as an expendable means to (rather than the nonexpendable ends of) their illiberal agenda
Anybody antidemocracy is immediately written off as mentally challenged in my book.
Lukewarm take: modern democracy is a failure, in its own objective of giving the people political power. Giving everyone, regardless of qualification, a political voice does not work unless they also undergo extensive education in politics, philosophy and class consciousness.
It also requires that the available sources of information be rational, objective and unbiased, something impossible for private mass media.
So, in reality we end up where we are: vast swathes of unqualified and apathetic voters who the ruling class can herd into the desired electoral outcome; manipulated by lies and fear to vote against their own interests.
TLDR: Democracy only works as advertised when the rich are specifically and fully excluded from the process and the resources necessary to influence the outcome.
A select group of people are not allowed to decide the competency and place of other people. A race of people cannot be declared superior to all others. Any such system is doomed to fail in a violent bloody mess as they’re inevitably proven wrong and ineffective.
Democracy is the only system capable of providing justice and equality.
You are literally describing why our current form of democracy doesnt work. A select few are able to game the system by virtue of owning private media empires, and the only outcome is eventual, violent change.
The purer and more direct the democracy the better, our current form in the USA specifically is flawed and the only recourse is electing enough DNC to restrict those who infringe upon the rights of others: repealing citizens united decision, taxing the rich, fair redistricting, absolute immutable rights for each person such as habeus corpus, and most importantly breaking up monopolies.
Maybe someday we can even seriously consider removing FPTP voting.
You might notice that the one side “gaming the system” the most are extremely undemocratic: Republican presidents win by EC Vote more often than popular vote, the GOP want to restrict voting access and remove names from rolls all the time, they tried to storm the capital on Jan 6 because they lost, they are disproportionately represented by low population red states in the senate like North Dakota, and they’re promoting a literal wannabe monarch Donald Trump who has been posting AI generated memes of himself wearing a crown.
This won’t end in bloodshed unless the villains of this story, Trump, starts the bloodshed and even then the prevailing side, the united strength of US Citizens and Immigrants, won’t tear the USA down they will repair it.
Other nations suffer similar problems but some far far less because there are forms of Democratic government which have thrived and are simply the best form of government.
Thankfully, I’m selectively illiterate!