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Observing the pantagruelian expense and listening to and reading about the nauseating, sociopathic babble of the seemingly endless Republican primaries in the United States; people all over the world are questioning the democratic process and wondering if China's authoritarian system might be superior.
In my opinion, this is not a problem of systems, democracy is not an end in itself, it is simply a means to an end. The object in democracy is the same as in any system, be it an authoritarian or even a totalitarian, tyrannical regime: governance.
Democracy, by allowing a fuller expression of the people who practice it, logically expresses more faithfully the nature of that people then any other system possibly could. If the society practicing democracy is decadent and corrupt, so their democratic expression will reflect that decadence and corruption.
In the United States, quoting today's The Guardian,
"Almost one third of Americans, according to a recent poll, have read Atlas Shrugged, and it now sells hundreds of thousands of copies every year."
The financial crisis we are suffering now, worldwide, is simply the result of a faithful following over decades of the psychopathic philosophy of Ayn Rand by the United States of America, which happens to be the world's most powerful country... The disaster that follows cannot be laid at the feet of democracy... just like with computers, in democracy GIGO applies: "garbage in, garbage out".
It is the United States and its values that have been hollowed out and debased, not democracy. DS
2 comments:
I read Atlas Shrugged, and the Fountainhead, as a 19 year old. They were exhilarating at that time, when one is trying to differentiate oneself and individuate.
Now, they seem like monstrous and boring concoctions of narcissism and grandiosity.
I can't believe that real adults would be able to stomach those books.
Keep in mind that the USA is not monolithic: in places like the upper midwest and New England, and the Pacific Northwest, people think somewhat differently, and believe in a more communal ethic.
Unfortunately, the Sun Belt and Red States will take the system down, and force areas/regions to become defacto independent - that is, if the people wish to survive or even thrive (whatever that means in the age of peak oil and peak credit).
Sometimes (often) I think it would have been better if the Confederacy had won their independence.
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