I will argue that this so called "Democracy" is and isn't real democracy. I also argue that everybody acknowledges this, but most people got it all backwards. To that end, let's review how people conceive the current democratic system. In the mainstream view, this pseudo-democracy, as I shall call it hereafter, really is a form of democratic exercise. They believe that choosing a single personality every few years, with a midterm election of minor officials, is the ultimate and only possible form of democracy. They also acknowledge, at the same time, that their leaders do not represent them, and that the system, despite being quintessentially democratic, is not actually being democratic. Though they mostly blame this on corruption and on the personalities of those making the decisions for them. People relinquish their decision making powers to somebody they can later blame for acting for their own personal interest.
In contrast, this is how I perceive pseudo-democracy. One: People do not actually participate in democratic decision making /at all/. They make a periodic ritual of, as I have already said, relinquishing their political power to a personality, one that they do not even choose, but which is previously chosen for them long before they have the opportunity to decide whether they will support that person or begrudgingly support that person or equally begrudgingly support their opponent. Two: the system is broken by design, and punishes a significant part of the population. A pseudo-democratic system may have two parties or more. In the case of a two-party system, it has a grand total of one more party than a totally-not-democratic one party system. Here you are handed the enviable power of choosing between Turd Sandwich or Giant Douche. A two party system has one advantage over multi-party systems. In a two-party system it is actually the majority of the voting population the one that appoints their executioner for the next N years. Usually the margin for the victory tends to be rather slim, so that while the interests of this majority are more or less represented, the remaining, usually quite large percentage of the population is punished by having their interests buried for the next number of years. In multi-party systems this is a much bigger problem. If there are three major political parties, it needs just be over 1/3 of the population that decides the destiny of the remaining two thirds. In my experience, as there are more political parties in the system, they often tend to coalesce into alliances, so ultimately one is mostly faced with either two or three options, with just a few major figures running for office.
Anyway, we have made our choice for who's going to make every choice for the next N years, considering we live in a "democracy", do we have further decision making power? Yes! We are afforded one more opportunity to choose in the midterms. In a way, this serves to reinforce or mitigate a good or bad decision in choosing our favorite personality. But the somewhat larger array of personalities that we have at hand are less known, they belong to a political class that is explicitly kept as a distinct sector of the population, and these are people of which we know little more than the party to which they belong. In this sense, we can choose to vote for the party of the current president or for the other party. And in all these elections, we usually face having to vote for one of the majoritary parties if we want our vote to have any value whatsoever. If we vote for a party that's not one of the few hegemonic parties, we know for sure our candidate has no chance of winning.
Okay, so you have made clear that you don't believe in pseudo-democracy, but you did say it IS democratic, after all. Care to explain?
In a way, I think democracy is inherent to any kind of society, not just pseudo-democracies. I already said that people make a ritual of relinquishing their political power to one of a few contenders every few years. There is a veiled acknowledgement here that people do have political power, even if they choose not to use it. Sadly, this seems to be a thing of human nature, where people would much rather follow directions than they would burden themselves with the work of thinking for themselves and making conscious decisions. We live in what is called a "complex society", where we belong to several networks in the social tissue which are the source of any kind of power, be it political, economic, or else. We work for a certain person, or sustain comercial relationships to some other, we choose to buy from a certain provider, and we choose to buy products that reflect our values. For example, my neighbours have on display a huge fridge stamped with the logo and filled with bottles of imperial diabetes. Each of these is a political choice that we make. I often say that the political power of a specific person is only ever possible because it rests on the capacity for action of millions of others. Without these millions, there is no way such a person could do the slightest kind of change. We all belong to "chains of command" that ultimately reach all the way up to some point on the power sphere. If I make a choice to work at a job, I can make the choice to work for a big blind corporation set out on crushing the human soul and extracting everything it can for the benefit of it's board of directors, or I may choose to work doing something that produces actual value for the people. One could choose to work for a bank, or on a publicity industry, or one can choose to take the risk not to become part of a death machine but at the same time contribute to a social fabric which can hopefully outlast the imminent collapse of a mindless extractive machinery. And therein lies the whole difference, and the aggregate decisions of millions of people, to become part of one or other tendency, that determines the direction that a society as a whole is to take. Surely, there will always be people on both bands, and the overall tendency of a society depends on how many more people push either way. In a way, the pseudo-democratic ritual sort of reflects this, but in being conscious and owning our daily decisions is how we can actually exert our political power, rather than letting one person decide for us for a number of years and entirely forgetting about it and choosing to support the death machine while we hope it doesn't suck out our lives.
So what happens to those living in a country that has for decades performed terrorist and anti-democratic acts all over the world? Surely, the time for the crimes of such an imperial country to be paid has to arrive at some point. Those living in such a time can be seen to lament their destiny, while at the same time to keep relinquishing their power and choosing to keep up the very system that is destroying them. They push the war machinery with all their might while at the same time protest that the machinery is moving and consuming all their life force. Put another way, if the country is truly a democracy, then it's external policies, their imperial tone, the hostility it shows to the rest of the world, it's delusions of superiority, and in general their extractive and exploitative way of acting with people outside of their borders, that is the sum aggregate of the actions of all (or at least, a truly overwhelming majority) of it's citizens. Given that a population may have, for decades, seeded war in every corner of the world, kidnapped, imprisoned, and even killed leaders of sovereign countries and established dictatorships in such countries, then they alone should be the once facing punishment for their crimes, and not the people on other countries. Of course, those on other countries who also suffer due to the collapse of other countries do so because in their own societies they have supported the mechanisms that are an extension of the empire. I think again of my neighbours displaying a huge fridge of imperial diabetes.
I have mixed feelings writing this. On one hand, I've had enough of the imperial mindset and it's activity online, and it is for those that champion this way of thinking that I direct my words. On the other hand, it is hardly any of them who will be reading them, but mostly people who actually push the other way, that true minority that I can see doing their best to live according to their own values and yet are being pulled down by the sheer weight of the great majority that keep, right to this day, supporting the death machinery and the declining empire. Still, I would like to say that I see these people, and I see the great work that they are doing. And while they might be part of an empire on the brink of collapse (indeed, already in the first stages of a major collapse event), they still have exactly the kind of power I keep mentioning. Moreover, a time of crisis is also a time of great opportunity. A collapse is a time where a lot of energy is released, energy which, if used correctly and with the right attitude, serve to build the kind of society that they might want to see emerge. I am sure that from the rubble of the empire a garden will grow, encouraged by those who, by their very acts of resilience and their devotion to life, will outlive all of those who cling to the last moments of a dying monster. It is with these people, choosing life in the cracks of the war machinery, that my sympathy lies, even if I speak harshly of the majority of the society in which they have had the unenviable challenge of being born.