Just posted this in the comments on Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian’s conversation on Scheerpost at Substack today:
Everything looks insane.
A total disconnect between what we think should be and what actually is.
Where’s the reason for that?
It’s here:
We think we are in democratic countries with democratic rule.
But democratic rule means rule by the people of the people for the people.
‘By the people’. Get it?
By the people.
But the people are doing nothing to rule themselves.
All over our democracies we assume our elected representatives are doing it for us.
Well they are not.
And they are not even theoretically supposed to. They are supposed to represent our wishes. Us. They should represent us.
But when we elect one of them because they are of the Party that we least dislike then in effect We are representing Them.
Completely the wrong way round.
So we expect one kind of reality because we think we are ‘democratic’.
But we don’t attempt to function as democratic citizens.
Hence we get another kind of reality: effective despotism.
The despotism of inhuman big business is what it is, essentially, nothing more nor less than that.
We have to get the idea out of our heads that we’re democratic nations simply because someone said so.
We will never be democratic nations until the citizens participate continually in the political process.
And it is very doubtful we’ll ever get there because, clearly, the vast majority have no desire to participate. Too much trouble. Too hard.
They get plumbers to do the plumbing for them, electricians to do the electrical work, builders to do the building – and they expect politicians to do all the political work.
They don’t want to do it.
In effect, in fact, we live in dictatorships. The dictatorship of Big Business motivated by profit not by concern for humanity.
It is said the ideal govt would be benevolent dictatorship
We currently do not have a benevolent dictatorship. We have malevolent dictatorships.
Open the eyes. Drop the newspeak. Tell it as it is: we do not live in democracies, we live in dictatorships and then perhaps we can begin work on making those dictatorships benevolent instead of malevolent.
And here’s the conversation I’m talking about: