Damnocracy’s First-class Ideas

Damnocracy: describing lack of democracy as faulty democracy in an attempt to spray perfume on the stink of plutocracy.

Anytime anyone speaks of democracy in America you can be certain that they are either ignorant, stupid or a hired propagandist.

The Atlantic, a first-class corporate magazine that claims to ”advance bold ideas on the urgent issues of our time”, featured in its March issue, America is not a democracy by Yascha Mounk, lecturer on government at Harvard.

The title seems straight forward, but first-class political statements in the land of damnocracy need not reflect meaning. Mounk twists and squeals to tells us America is a democracy with problems. Classic damnocracy. If he was honest about his article’s title, he would tell us what kind rule governs America if not a democracy. He doesn’t. His lecture on government continually unrolls democracy with negative attributes to wrap around ”the land of liberty” as though it were the empire’s new robe.

Professors Gilens and Page’s now famous report showing that the general public has a ”near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” as opposed to the ” substantial impact” of political and business heavies, also sounds straight forward non-democracy, but Mounk tells us that news sources ”cited this explosive finding as evidence of what overeager headline writers called American oligarchy.” ”Overeager”? ”Headline” (not real writers)? How does Harvard lecturer Mounk interpret the report? ”… another serious indication of a creeping democratic deficit in the land of liberty.” In other words, a powerless public following public policy dictated by a wealthy minority should not be overeagerly described as an oligarchy but as ”a creeping democratic deficit”.

What about the average voters who don’t see their preferences reflected in the decisions made by politicians? ”For good reason, they are growing … disenchanted with democracy”, according to Y. Mounk, who, some sentences later, states categorically, ”America does have a democracy problem. … we need to start by taking an honest accounting of the ways in which power has slipped out of the people’s hands”.
How can democracy exist if ”power has slipped out of the people’s hands”?

Let’s not torture our reasoning with Mounk’s first-class twisted logic, but conclude by relating his solution to the ”democracy problem”:

”To avoid further damage to the rule of law and the rights of the most-vulnerable Americans, traditional elites should appropriate even more power for themselves.”

That’s not satire and I’m now misquoting. It’s a copy and paste statement speaking between the lines about a serious split in the ranks of the first-class citizens. Those of us who are traveling plebian-class should not identify with the ”we” in Mounk’s solution.

”we need to start by taking an honest accounting of the ways in which power has slipped out of the people’s hands, and think more honestly about the ways in which we can—and cannot—put the people back in control.”

Nor should we take his ”honest” and ” more honestly” as anything other than a first-class con man’s bullshit. Can you imagine the ”traditional elites” straining their brains thinking of ways to ”put the people back in control”? You would have to be a believer in The Atlantic as a corporate media channel advancing bold ideas to swallow that garbage. Or a believer in damnocracy.

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”Hard winds at the heights of the hierarchy
demand ever more clever explanations
for stupid policy.”
Dartwill Aquila

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The West Bank is now the Judea-Samaria area.