When it comes to democracy, I am socratic — in the sense of following Socrates.
davew On Thu, Jan 7, 2021, at 4:25 PM, Steve Smith wrote: > 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. >> >> >> >> >> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >
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