Looks Like Democracy, Smells Like Tyranny

Common Dreams is a daily web site with a broad following. Its stated mission: ”To ignite change for the common good” by providing ”news & views for the progressive community”. For the past six months it has functioned as a de facto PAC for Bernie Sanders. At least one and often several articles in praise of Bernie appears daily. Yesterday’s issue featured an article by the experienced and award winning nationally syndicated journalist Robert Koehler flying the lead title, ”This Is What Democracy Looks Like”. Under the title Koehler gives a a sketch of a Sanders rally in Chicago and stacks it with sound bites that he called highlights of Bernie’s speech.

Bob for Bernie Koehler proves that he doesn’t know what democracy looks like. I’ll explain below, but I must ask a few questions first.

What does invading a country based on lies, and killing millions look like?
What does killing 100s of children and 1000s of other innocents to take out ”suspects” look like?
What does police shooting unarmed people in the streets look like?
What does private prisons where inmates work as slaves look like?
What does giving billions of dollars yearly to Israel’s apartheid regime slowly exterminating their imprisoned Palestinians look like?
What does pressing ever more citizens into poverty and homelessness look like?
What does a government of bribe-saturated millionaires look like?
What does treating traumatized veterans with cocktails of drugs inducing thousands of suicides a year look like?
What does poisoning 100.000 people with toxic water so that very rich people can be given tax-breaks look like?
What does a medical industry causing medical treatment to be the third most common cause of death look like?
What does supplying the head-chopping Saudis with weapons, experts and logistics to slaughter the poor people of Yemen look like?
What …
You get the point without me extending the look-like questions a few pages. The questions can all be answer with various single words that don’t look, smell or taste like democracy.

So what does democracy look like? It looks like the will of the people, the majority at least, manifested in laws, policies and the development of the nation. I can assure Bob, Common Dreams and all the Bernies that the will of the people is not expressed in false promises and illusions about what their nation looks like.

Democracy is a three-stage operation; freedoms – process – decisions. Elections are a part of the process. They no more guarantee democratic decisions than cooking guarantees a tasty meal. When we know that the cooks are crooked, the pots rusty, the water polluted and the ingredients rotten, we shouldn’t be told to expect something delicious. Unless, of course, we don’t know what good food looks and tastes like. Unfortunately, in an obese, junk-food nation, all too few people do.

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“If a man kills 10 people in a typical manner,
he is called a serial killer.
If a man kills 100s of children,
in a typical (drone-hellfire) manner,
he is called a president.”
Dartwill Aquila

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