[FRIAM] Fallback in barbarism

[Steve Smith]

J -

John Adams reminded us: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon
wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet
that did not commit suicide.”

FWIW:

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-worlds-oldest-democracies

I'm also a fan of the description of Democracy as "the Tyranny of a
majority over a minority" tempered with the clause in Churchill's
"...except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to
time..."

The popular vote for Trump was roughly 74M which was *approaching* 47%
of the total vote of 158M which is almost  half of the ~330M, so a mere
25% voted *for* Trump and yet his supporters in the number of thousands
storming the Capital to try to overthrow that *claim* they are a
majority.   Even Biden's 51+% is not a "majority of the people", albeit
*over* 25% FWIW...   We can all shriek that "if you don't vote, you
can't complain" and I don't want to enumerate the myriad reasons people
might not vote (including being underage or legally unable to (alien
permanent residents, convicted felons in many states, etc.) but the fact
remains those non-voters deserve proper representation *even if* they
failed to do something obvious to achieve it.

My own biases suggest that there are *very few* non-voting Trumpsters
this time around, but *plenty* of people for whom the Dem's agenda is
more supportive of (my view is that the Dems try much harder to
represent *everyone* in their domain of representation than the
Republicans who seem more inclined (not exclusively but significantly)
to ignore the plight of the disenfranchised.

How does Germany's representative democracy fair in your opinion?  Do
you know what penetration of voting is there, and does your
Parliamentary form include coalition building, etc.  compared to our own
stark flippy-floppy winner-takes all nonsense?

- Steve


On 1/7/21 3:00 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I must say the images from CNN which we receive here in Europe are a
> bit disturbing. The mob that stormed the heart of American democracy
> felt like anarchy, like a fallback in barbaric ancient times - the
> time of Barbarians vs Romans or even the stone age. It is like
> Neanderthals found a way to use a time machine to travel into the 21st
> century: one guy was dressed in fur pelts and was holding a wooden
> stick like a wizard from Lord of the Rings, and one half-naked guy was
> wearing furs and horns (the one known as "Q shaman"). Long-haired
> bearded guys have been looting stuff like cavemen - in the center of
> Washington D.C.!
> https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ELECTION/PROTESTS/qmyvmqewmvr/
>
> How is this possible in the oldest democracy of the world? 
>
> -J.
>
>
>
>
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