Thread by @m_older

"Believes in democracy" should be the absolute minimum qualification for serving in public office in our aspiring democracy.

https://twitter.com/SenMikeLee/status/1314089207875371008

As I wrote for @ForeignPolicy, democracy is a principle of government that we should be able to come together around, far more powerful and near-universal than some sort of shared reality foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/25/bui…

But this comemierdería from someone who supposedly got his power from a supposed democracy is not a new argument. Opponents of democracy have long argued that you can get better outcomes if you just let someone - them - be in charge without all the fiddly voting & other people

But let's think about it. It's true, our democracy-adjacent country is far from perfect. The US locks up more people per capita than any other nation, so yeah, liberty is a problem. But do you imagine there would be more under an undemocratic government? prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie202…

With our semi-democratic system, some jurisdictions can vote on the sheriffs, DAs, have referenda about prison and justice policy, and we have the opportunity to vote out legislators and executives who commit offenses against liberty. In an undemocratic society, what would we do?

If anything, the problem is that we don't have ENOUGH democracy, because if people most affected by this, those who are and have been incarcerated could vote everywhere, isn't it likely that we would have better laws and policies on the matter?

(and if that comemierda meant something by "liberty" besides "not being held prisoner in jail," the same arguments apply. Why would you think you would have more liberty under the rule of a person not subject to periodic recall at the ballot box? Unless, of course,

*you* specifically are confident that the person in charge will let *you* and your friends do whatever you want, no matter how it harms, impoverishes, or inconveniences others. THAT kind of liberty.)

What was next? oh, *peace*. Wellllllll, comemierda, aside from the fact that PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE IS NO PEACE, dictatorial and autocratic regimes are not well known for being peaceful.

In fact, democratic countries are far less likely to go to war against other democratic countries. Maybe because going to war is terrible for everyone except those who are shielded from it and make money off of it. The more people have any say in the matter, the less likely it is

(yes, there are a lot of caveats in there about correlation and causality and whether democratic regimes feel like it's okay to fight against undemocratic regimes but not democratic ones, etc, etc, but the empirical point stands and is suggestive of my hypothesis)

And finally, prosperity (I don't need to make fun of typos, there's enough to ridicule here without them). Where does this idea come from that undemocratic regimes are more prosperous? Looking at recent political economic history, that's not supported. Unless, of course,

*you*, specifically, believe that you're going to benefit economically from the specific person who is in power and able to direct and siphon of resources.

I might come back to prosperity later, but I think the pattern is clear enough for the moment. Let's go back to the initial statement. Democracy is a means to an end: the best possible life for everyone - including liberty, peace, and prosperity. So far, it's the best way we know

You can listen to experts who have studied this quantitatively or qualitatively, or you can just think about it: democracy, however flawed (and our democracy is super flawed) gives you a way to hold leaders to account. Maybe not a great way, but more than you have with a dictator

As long as you don't assume that the dictator is always going to be on your side - and note that means NOT on someone else's side - then it seems pretty obvious that some kind of accountability is better than none.

What we need to do is work toward MORE democracy so we can have MORE accountability, MORE say in decisions, MORE voices heard - and thereby, MORE liberty, peace, and prosperity for EVERYONE.

(Incidentally, I initially misread the tweet as saying that "democracy is not objective" which is a way more sophisticated argument than that comemierda was going to manage, but as I hope this thread makes clear liberty and peace and prosperity aren't either.)

OH I almost forgot about the rest of the tweet. "Rank democracy," says this comemierda.

https://twitter.com/SenMikeLee/status/1314089207875371008?s=20

One of the challenges of democracy is the potential for oppression by the majority. That's why we have the Bill of Rights, to set certain rights aside so that the majority rule cannot abrogate them. But that's not what this comemierda is talking about.

Because look at this adjective. Rank.

"coarse or thick," or "smelly", like democracy has too many people in it, or in the sense he's ostensibly using it, "usually of something bad or deficient." Also, there's what it brings to mind, which is the phrase "rank and file": ordinary people, the many

yes I am going all textual analysis on this comemierda. Fund the humanities.

What he's saying is that he doesn't want the ordinary people, the ones he considers lower in *rank* than himself, to get in the way of *his* liberty and prosperity. And he's signaling that to anyone who will listen.

Democracy is supposed to mean that everyone gets an equal vote, a practical demonstration of the idea that every individual is equal, has an equal right to a voice in how they are governed. It hasn't worked out that way, because no country has yet been willing to commit to fully+

to democracy; hence the electoral comemierda college and the senate and etc etc. People like Senator comemierda above want to make it less democratic, because they think they're better than everyone else and shouldn't be bothered by the masses.

(maybe they don't even think they're better, given the thinness of the evidence for that; maybe they're just greedy)

They want to claim that without the masses they can engineer better outcomes, but there's no evidence for this, and it doesn't make any sense, because why would they care about better outcomes for people they don't consider equal?

tl;dr: OP's a comemierda; we need more democracy, not less; fund the humanities.