Professor Michael Glennon and I — have concluded that — American democracy is just about dead

21 February 2017

Theme — democracy strangled

We are witnessing a battle between a presidential autocrat (Donald Trump) and our equally totalitarian Deep State. (I explained some of this here.)

Whoever wins, the autocratic result is almost certainly going to be the same. Bye, bye democratic freedoms.

Public ignorance, apathy and stupidity have bad social effects

I have been rather negative about democracy's viability in a society of 325 million people. We have:

too many folks for democratically transparent institutions to cope with,

an overabundance of ignorantly silly and often vicious citizen opinions,

as well as —

a guaranteed excess of excessively selfish nastiness.

I have even wondered whether benevolent dictatorship or governance via artificial intelligence would be superior to the system that the Founders set up.

And I have occasionally pronounced our American democracy dead or on life support. Here and here, for example.

Every time I mention our foolishly aristocratic Supreme Court's Citizens United v Federal Election Commission opinion, you know that I will say something about intubating republican democracy — so that it can take a few last breaths — before it croaks under the avalanche of plutocratic money that crushed it.

A second and confirming opinion

Law professor Michael Glennon shares my pessimistic outlook for the same government structure reasons that I frequently refer to. Our constitutional system requires an informed and responsibly thinking We the People to operate as it was designed. In the face of an ignorant, factionally inflamed and non-cooperating Public — American democracy is doomed.

Professor Glennon wrote about aspects of this problem of governance in National Security and Double Government (Oxford University Press, 2015). That insightful book addressed the emergence of the national security portion of the Deep State.

From my perspective, Glennon's analysis subtly demonstrates how human nature made the American totalitarian evolution almost unavoidable.

In the absence of determined counter-interventions, supported and directed by knowledgeably active voters, personal and bureaucratic self-interests inevitably aim themselves toward autocratic outcomes.

In a recent interview (and evidently for the above reason), Professor Glennon concluded that American democracy is just about dead:

My own sense is that a happy outcome [—in the conflict between President Trump and the Deep State—] is unlikely and that American democracy is now confronting an abyss.

The root of the problem is that, as the result of widespread and pervasive civic, political and historical ignorance, the aspirations of the polity to participate in governance vastly exceeds its capacity to do so responsibly.

In recent days, activism and engagement have spiked, but the base of knowledge needed for effective democratic governance still is not present, and it’s hard to see why or how or when that will change.

If it takes reading 1984 to realize we’ve got a problem, chances are it’s too late to do anything useful about it.

I may be wrong, and I hope I am. But the realistic answer, I’m afraid, is that people are waking up too late.

The mechanics underlying American democracy's death

During the interview, Glennon made the following points — here listed in my words:

Those who hope that the Deep State unseats our widely disliked President Trump are overlooking a critical fact. Leaders like him manipulate bureaucratic organizations to their personal advantage. They cultivate and empower the bureaucratic factions that support them.

The empowered factions then take over the rest of the bureaucracy. This results in a strengthened autocrat.

In alternative instances — meaning in cases in which Bureaucracy unseats the Dictator-Wannabe — the factions that pulled off the coup then become the top totalitarian players.

Eventually, we can infer, one of the powerful people among those submerged organizational factions steps up to the plate of authority. He or she displaces the loser leader whom the bureaucratic component had previously displaced in all but name.

For Liberty and Democracy, both outcomes are deadly.

The moral? — Americans have been missing the Liberty-preserving point of politics for decades

If we are going to avert living in a totalitarian state, we are going to have to get off our behinds, educate each other, and take up the Fisticuffs of Enlightened Revolt.

That means that we will have to stop allowing ourselves to be diverted by emotion-inducing non-essentials. Which pretty much includes everything that every political campaign (local and national) since the Vietnam War has been about.

I do not imply that this reoriented focus needs to result in a deluge of blood and guts. But it does have to be more intelligently involved than fact-avoiding, unthinking Americans have been for decades.

Hence, for example, my irritation with the Pussy Hat Brigade, representative Obama Democrats, and consistently malevolent Republicans.

Cowards, dopes and puppets do not make or maintain Freedom.

Since that phrase arguably describes most of humanity, I — and presumably Professor Glennon — are not optimistic about Lady Liberty's ability to maintain herself in a populous society. At least under conditions in which knowledgeable citizen involvement is necessary to keep the System running as it should.

In truth, this planet's most successful democracies are small compared to the United States. We in America have just gotten too big for Freedom's britches.

What is next looks even more sadly unpleasant than where we are.

PeteFree.com

Professor Michael Glennon and I — have concluded that — American democracy is just about dead