One of my political pet peeves is the conflation of voting and democracy. In America they’re not only synonymous but voting has somehow managed to superseded democracy in this weird way. It's as if we believe democracy is created by voting. Democracy is a system of government in which an entire population participates. Voting is a mechanism by which a whole mess of people can participate in government but, while it’s by far the most popular, it’s only one potential mechanism.
In theory a democracy could have a rotating randomly selected panel of 100 citizens who deliberate and make choices for the state. In theory you could set up The Hunger Games and the survivor is the one-person government for a year until the winner of the next Games takes over. You could have no government at all. In the future you could have a device that measures your feelings that’s connected to a computer monitoring all citizens' feelings on issues before the state that then formulates plans of action based on what the people feel.
Democracy isn’t voting. Democracy is government by the people. But how that “by” works is a real sticky wicket. Voting is just the (seemingly best) mechanism we've come up so far but that doesn't mean it will be forever. With that in mind…
One of the things Spectra and I find curious is how much English is used on the shirts of the Shutdown Bangkok protesters. Apparently this is in part a ploy to get Western media attention. We find that somewhat amusing because the US government wants the elections to go ahead so the political impasse can be solved “democratically.” That is to say America is, in effect, anti-protests.
Democracy isn’t voting. Democracy is government by the people. But how that “by” works is a real sticky wicket. Voting is just the (seemingly best) mechanism we've come up so far but that doesn't mean it will be forever. With that in mind…
One of the things Spectra and I find curious is how much English is used on the shirts of the Shutdown Bangkok protesters. Apparently this is in part a ploy to get Western media attention. We find that somewhat amusing because the US government wants the elections to go ahead so the political impasse can be solved “democratically.” That is to say America is, in effect, anti-protests.
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| A typical protester. Note the whistle. |
As Americans, Spectra and I are pretty sure the vaaaaast majority of Americans would side against the protesters. Americans protest too but we tend to get permits to gather here or march there and our protests are generally aimed at the source of animosity. When we're mad at the government we amass outside government offices and failing that in parks rather than strategically block thoroughfares to be as generally disruptive as possible for as long as we can keep it up. Why should Joe Plumber be punished through additional traffic fiascoes when the protesters are mad at the government? That would strike Americans us as unjust.
On top of that there’s the minor issue of the idea of suspending elections so an unelected panel of experts can work with the king to govern while democracy is on hiatus. I'm tempted to say that would strike Americans as draconian but it's too far out for that (plus we don't know what draconian means and can't be bothered to look it up). Off the top of my head I can’t name a single person in the United States who would agree with suspending democracy so a monarch and unelected experts can run things for a while. It boggles the American mind.
Just to reiterate for the untold-th time, Spectra and I don’t fully comprehend the issues behind the Shutdown Bangkok protests so we aren’t taking sides. But one of the things we do know is part, most, or all of the protesters believe the election system is structurally unfair and as a result elections don’t accurately reflect the will of the Thai population. The protesters' solution is to prove the elected government should be thrown out by bringing the city to a snail's crawl making it impossible for the government to govern. Wait a minute... that sounds awfully familiar.
In America it’s fair to wonder if the will of the people got muffled somewhere between gerrymandered House districts, corporate personhood, and the oceans of undisclosed money available through 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations like Crossroad GPS (conservative) and Americans for Responsible Solutions (liberal). Then once our elected "representatives" get to work they too often go about the business of gumming things up for their opponents to prove how ineffectual they are in hopes of getting them voted out of office. Even with our concerns about the state of democracy in America it’s unimaginable that we’d go to the lengths Shutdown Bangkok protesters are going to. Hobbling the epicenter of a nation in order to stop elections just doesn’t sound very democratic.
To be honest, even though I don’t understand the issues behind the Shutdown Bangkok protests I’ve found them a bit unseemly because they feel too undemocratic to me. The whole thing struck me as a kind of bizarro “Gentleman. You can’t fight in here. This is the war room" so I was kind of tacitly against them. Plus, they are annoying.
To be honest, even though I don’t understand the issues behind the Shutdown Bangkok protests I’ve found them a bit unseemly because they feel too undemocratic to me. The whole thing struck me as a kind of bizarro “Gentleman. You can’t fight in here. This is the war room" so I was kind of tacitly against them. Plus, they are annoying.
For example, our bus routes have been rerouted and now it takes three and four times as long to get to the nearest metro station. And you never know if they'll suddenly be rerouted again and what impact that will have on travel time. It's annoying but it's not as grating as the whistles. The protesters' sonic weapon of choice is the whistle. Like the kind a referee uses to stop play. So whenever you're near a protest site there's a perpetual din of shrill whistling from thousands of people. It's annoying because it's supposed to be and I was against it until I saw—of all things—a t-shirt.
On Friday night Spectra and I were making our way home through a metro station near one of the protest sites. There were protesters coming and going and I was taking note of shirt after shirt--something I do all the time but Spectra finds odd--when one leapt out at me. It was a shirt I'd never seen before and haven't seen since. It was black and on the front in big white letters it said:
On Friday night Spectra and I were making our way home through a metro station near one of the protest sites. There were protesters coming and going and I was taking note of shirt after shirt--something I do all the time but Spectra finds odd--when one leapt out at me. It was a shirt I'd never seen before and haven't seen since. It was black and on the front in big white letters it said:
WHISTLE
BLOWER
In Thailand, like everywhere else I've been in Asia, you see a lot of English on t-shirts and hats that either doesn't make sense or does but you wonder if the wearer gets what it means. This was case in point. I wondered if the young lady wearing the shirt understood what the expression "whistle-blower" means in English. She could have just been wearing it because it has a literal "one who blows a whistle" meaning in Thai. I hadn’t finished thinking through whether the protesters might be considered American-style whistle-blowers when she walked past me and I saw the back of her shirt. It said:
“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.” Thomas Jefferson*
In case you didn't know, Thomas Jefferson is my favorite pre-Civil War president and my biggest "what if" lament in American history is Jefferson losing his battle with Alexander Hamilton. I'm simplifying here but, Jefferson wanted a raucous democracy that required high degrees of participation while Hamilton wanted a placid democracy where people could merely vote and then go about their lives. I’ve always thought I’d rather live in Jefferson’s raucous democracy because when a government runs amok it takes Herculean effort, and all too often lots of dead people, to fix it. So it feels insufficient to check in every couple years by voting for the people who have strangleholds on their districts and/or fathoms of "dark money" to drown the opposition.
I'm sure you'll be stunned to hear that being in Bangkok the last couple of weeks has made me reconsider just how raucous a democracy I’d be interested in living in. Not that Bangkok is necessarily what Jefferson had in mind but it probably isn’t exactly what he didn’t have in mind either. I haven’t reversed my Jefferson v. Hamilton position yet--although I’m not ruling out that possibility--but it has complicated my feelings about Shutdown Bangkok.
Before I saw that lady’s “WHISTLE BLOWER” t-shirt it’d chortled at the idea of their movement being democratic and the notion that Americans would sympathize with them. If anything scuttling an election you know you’re going to lose sounded patently un-democratic. Now I realize just how blinkered I really am by Hamilton getting the better of Jefferson. Even though I was sure I was self aware enough on this point, I caught myself tut-tutting the rabble rousing riffraff on my way to the ballot box before meeting friends for brunch over mimosas.
That doesn’t mean I’m pro-Shutdown Bangkok because I still have no idea if what they’re so mad about is fair or even true. It does mean I’m reconsidering just how realistic and even democratic it is to expect America to vote its way out of the wet paper political sack it’s stuck in. Considering the structural advantages incumbents and/or the money anointed candidates have the notion that "the people" can simply vote their true representatives in strikes me as quixotic. But I'm not sure I like the apparent alternative either. Shutdown Bangkok is fascinating, unsettling and downright perplexing.
The more I think about it the more Gordian this knot appears but one thing that is clear is which populace, Thai or American, Thomas Jefferson would be prouder of right now. That doesn't solve any problems but it should sting and vex any American who gives a crap about, you know, being American.
“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.” Thomas Jefferson*
In case you didn't know, Thomas Jefferson is my favorite pre-Civil War president and my biggest "what if" lament in American history is Jefferson losing his battle with Alexander Hamilton. I'm simplifying here but, Jefferson wanted a raucous democracy that required high degrees of participation while Hamilton wanted a placid democracy where people could merely vote and then go about their lives. I’ve always thought I’d rather live in Jefferson’s raucous democracy because when a government runs amok it takes Herculean effort, and all too often lots of dead people, to fix it. So it feels insufficient to check in every couple years by voting for the people who have strangleholds on their districts and/or fathoms of "dark money" to drown the opposition.
I'm sure you'll be stunned to hear that being in Bangkok the last couple of weeks has made me reconsider just how raucous a democracy I’d be interested in living in. Not that Bangkok is necessarily what Jefferson had in mind but it probably isn’t exactly what he didn’t have in mind either. I haven’t reversed my Jefferson v. Hamilton position yet--although I’m not ruling out that possibility--but it has complicated my feelings about Shutdown Bangkok.
Before I saw that lady’s “WHISTLE BLOWER” t-shirt it’d chortled at the idea of their movement being democratic and the notion that Americans would sympathize with them. If anything scuttling an election you know you’re going to lose sounded patently un-democratic. Now I realize just how blinkered I really am by Hamilton getting the better of Jefferson. Even though I was sure I was self aware enough on this point, I caught myself tut-tutting the rabble rousing riffraff on my way to the ballot box before meeting friends for brunch over mimosas.
That doesn’t mean I’m pro-Shutdown Bangkok because I still have no idea if what they’re so mad about is fair or even true. It does mean I’m reconsidering just how realistic and even democratic it is to expect America to vote its way out of the wet paper political sack it’s stuck in. Considering the structural advantages incumbents and/or the money anointed candidates have the notion that "the people" can simply vote their true representatives in strikes me as quixotic. But I'm not sure I like the apparent alternative either. Shutdown Bangkok is fascinating, unsettling and downright perplexing.
The more I think about it the more Gordian this knot appears but one thing that is clear is which populace, Thai or American, Thomas Jefferson would be prouder of right now. That doesn't solve any problems but it should sting and vex any American who gives a crap about, you know, being American.
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| Ms. Chitpas is a divisive & controversial protest leader. Is she also Jefferson's philosophical heir? |
*This footnote was too good for me to pass up. According to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation there’s no evidence that Thomas Jefferson ever said this. In their words:
It has been suggested that it is a paraphrase of Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence, "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...," although such a paraphrase would seem to be taking some radical liberties with the original version.
Priceless. The best part is the actual quote is more apt than the fake one. Score one for doing your homework.
It has been suggested that it is a paraphrase of Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence, "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...," although such a paraphrase would seem to be taking some radical liberties with the original version.
Priceless. The best part is the actual quote is more apt than the fake one. Score one for doing your homework.
My favorite Jefferson-Hamilton story ... When the two were serving together in Washington's cabinet, Hamilton attended a dinner at Jefferson's place with a few other people (Washington was not there). Someone took note of the paintings on the wall behind the dining room table, and asked, "Who are those gentlemen?" Jefferson pointed them out, "Bacon, Newton, and Locke." These were all heroes of empiricism in contradistinction to champions of religion. Then someone thought it would be interesting to poll the guests on whom they thought was the greatest man in history. The first person said the predictable "Jesus Christ." Then Hamilton shocked everyone present by saying, "I think not. The greatest man in history was Julius Caesar." Jefferson was absolutely appalled (inasmuch as Caesar was the assassin of the Republic, the very mode of governance, more or less, that they were in the process of establishing). It's said that this was Jefferson's favorite anecdote about Hamilton, and that he never tired of retelling the story.
ReplyDelete"Why should Joe Plumber be punished through additional traffic fiascoes when the protesters are mad at the government? That would strike Americans us as unjust." Apparently not conservatives. During the Shutdown, a group of truckers (conservative, of course) planned to stage a traffic slowdown outside Washington by creeping along below the minimum speed limit, but not enough truckers participated to effect the desired result (much to the disappointment of Fox "News"). Then there is the Republican hostage taking – if you don't give us something, we'll shut down the government, or we'll not increase the debt limit, etc. This has popped up again in the Christie crisis, which is almost all they talk about on MSNBC. Christie (probably) or his immediate subordinates, ordered a number of lanes shutdown to the busiest bridge in the world, which cause an enormous and unanticipated traffic tie-up. This went on for about a week, causing problems for kids trying to get to school and emergency vehicles trying to respond to calls. Then we learned that something similar was done to punish the mayor of Hoboken for not supporting a construction project that would benefit one of Christie's friends. They then cut back on her Hurricane Sandy disaster fund share. They don't seem to have given much thought to who the people were who were actually getting hurt. "You won't do what I want, huh? Gee, it would be a shame if something happened to your nephew." What's especially strange is the thought that it doesn't matter to them if Joe the Plummer gets hurt right alone with their preferred targets.