Friday, December 14, 2018

Democracy And Her Magic Ponies

America has never had a direct democracy. It has never had a government where the majority of the people decide matters of policy. If you don’t believe me, recall what happened when states passed referenda about same-sex marriage. The courts overturned the results, as everyone knew they would.

America does not have a direct democracy because our founding fathers feared the tyranny of the majority. They cared about minority rights, especially about the rights of states that had smaller populations. They did not want the populous states to impose their will on everyone else. Thus, the electoral college and the United States Senate.

In the meantime radical Democrats, the media and the intelligentsia are running around trying to destroy Donald Trump… for his offenses against democracy. That’s right, they declare themselves to be proud and intrepid defenders of democracy while doing everything in their power to overturn a fair election. Fortunately, today’s Democrats have enough enablers in the media and the bureaucracy… so that no one will ever call them out on their mindless hypocrisy. And let’s not forget the Trump executive orders that have been stayed or overturned by federal judges. If you want to tar Trump as an autocrat or a dictator you would to explain why a single federal judge can so easily undo his executive actions.

As  a sidelight, and to gain a sense of the state of mind of media figures, we note that Mika Brzezinski yesterday spewed forth a gay slur against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. YOu and I know that no one at NBC will call her out on it and that no one will punish her for it.

The more interesting part of the story is this: recall when her father Zbigniew Brzezinski was National Security Advisor for President Jimmy Carter. We are living with the fallout today. Recall that Carter oversaw the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and facilitated the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to turn the country into an Islamist hellhole. And let’s not forget the Iran hostage crisis, so incompetently conducted by Carter and Brzezinski. Let’s take a gander at Mika’s father’s record in foreign policy… and then we can talk about who is whose butt boy.

But I digress.

By now we are all aware of the fact that American liberal democracy and Chinese authoritarian capitalism are competing for world cultural dominance. It’s the latest chapter in the clash of civilizations. We do not know who will win out. We do not know the outcome. We would be monumentally naive to imagine that the course of world history will necessarily lead to a victory for liberal democracy. One might even suggest, with good reason, that liberal democracy peaked when Francis Fukuyama announced that history was over and that liberal democracy had won. Of course, Fukuyama pretended to have gotten the idea from a great philosopher by name of G. W. F. Hegel. And we know that great German philosophers are never wrong.

Unfortunately, Fukuyama misread Hegel. The great philosopher saw the end of history in the image of a conquering imperialist hero, Napoleon, riding through his Prussian city of Jena. Trust me, Napoleon did not invade Prussia to bring it anything resembling Anglo-Saxon liberal democracy. You do not even need to read Hegel’s impenetrable prose to understand that. Strangely enough, no one seemed to much care that Fukuyama had completely misread Hegel. It says something about the quality of thought indulged by our intelligentsia.

Anyway, if you were feeling optimistic about the future of liberal democracy you should recognize a point that I have occasionally made, on this very blog. If we want liberal democracy to prevail we have to make it work. If the world sees a functioning society in China and a house divided against itself in America it is not going to embrace liberal democracy. It is going to think that liberal democracy’s flaws are too egregious and too dangerous to court.

Consider the angle that Peggy Noonan raised in the Wall Street Journal today. Do liberal democracies invariably choose competent leaders or are the people more often seduced by what she calls magic ponies?

Noonan emphasizes American presidents, but we are well within our rights to examine some of the leaders of the West’s great liberal democracies. Once-Great Britain is being led by Prime Minister Theresa May… not, of course, as a result of a direct election. May has had exactly one job: to negotiate Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union. In that she has failed miserably, most likely because of her basic incompetence. Think that she is the best Once-Great Britain can do... and gnash your teeth.

Across the channel, France’s Wunderkind is having his own problems-- namely, a popular uprising against the French taxation regimen. Emmanuel Macron surely counts among the brightest politicians working today. And yet, he introduced a regressive diesel fuel tax and provoked an insurrection. Dare we mention it, yet again, but Macron married his mother and marrying your mother does not put you in the running to be an alpha male. It does not command respect.

One country to the east, Germany is being led by the retiring Angela Merkel. Her greatest contribution to her nation will be her absurd open arms policy, admitting far more Muslim migrants than the nation could assimilate, and thus launching a crime wave and a rape culture. Eventually, it will damage Germany, perhaps beyond recognition. Merkel keeps winning elections, but she is finished politically… for having shown weakness when strength was required.

As for America, we will leave it to Noonan. By her lights our current and past president have been magic ponies who won office by manipulating emotion, ginning up hope and underperforming. When you live in a therapy culture that values feeling over rational thought, you get magic ponies. American democracy is increasingly incapable of electing a presidential candidate who is qualified, accomplished and who manifests sufficient gravitas. Yes, I understand that Barack Obama once said that Hillary Clinton was the most qualified candidate ever to fun for the office of the presidency. If enabling sexual harassment counts as a qualification perhaps he is right. In truth, Obama was being ironic. Hillary Clinton was such a bad candidate, such an incompetent public official, such a manifest fraud, so thoroughly unlikeable… that she could not beat Donald Trump.

Considering that he just passed away, George H. W. Bush counts as the last president who had the requisite qualities of experience not to be a magic pony. Noonan explains her idea:

Politics is part theater, part showbiz, it’s always been emotional, but we’ve gotten too emotional, both parties. It’s too much about feelings and how moved you are. The balance is off. We have been electing magic ponies in our presidential contests, and we have done this while slighting qualities like experience, hard and concrete political accomplishment, even personal maturity. Barack Obama, whatever else he was, was a magic pony. Donald Trump too. Beto O’Rourke, who is so electrifying Democrats, also appears to be a magic pony.

In a serious country, Beto O’Rourke would be a joke. His primary qualification seems to be that he reminds people of John F. Kennedy, America’s most revered magic pony.

Noonan limits herself to Obama and Trump:

Messrs. Obama and Trump represented a mood. They didn’t ask for or elicit rigorous judgment, they excited voters. Mr. Trump’s election was driven by a feeling of indignation and pushback: You elites treat me like a nobody in my own country, I’m about to show you who’s boss. His supporters didn’t consider it disqualifying that he’d never held office. They saw it as proof he wasn’t in the club and could turn things around. His ignorance was taken as authenticity. In this he was like Sarah Palin, another magic pony.

Obama effectively sold hope. And yet, hope is not a political agenda. It is not a program for leadership. It is an unguent to salve your wounds.

After two wars and an economic crisis, Mr. Obama gleamed with hope and differentness. This shining 47-year-old intellectual—surely he’ll turn things around. He’d been an obscure and indifferent state legislator who was only two years in the U.S. Senate when the move to make him president began. It was all—a feeling. He was The One.

True enough, it was nothing more than a feeling.

The trouble is, we keep finding ourselves led by people who lack the basics of good leadership:

But sober judgment, serious accomplishment, deep knowledge and personal maturity are most important in our political leaders, because of the complexity of the problems we face. History will be confounded that at such a crucial time, trying to come up with a plan to address such issues as artificial intelligence and robotics and the future of work and a rising China and the stresses of the nuclear world, we kept choosing magic ponies and hoping for the best.

Point well made… in the civilizational clash with China, we are hoping for the best. Because, if we cannot make democracy function effectively, all we have is hope. Which is hopeless.

11 comments:

Dr. Irredeemable Dreg said...

"sober judgment, serious accomplishment, deep knowledge and personal maturity are most important in our political leaders, because of the complexity of the problems we face"

Philosopher-kings. Perfect. The fickle passions of welders and waitresses must be properly governed and regulated.

Instead of offering learned disputations from the lofty aeries of the WSJ Opinion page, Noonan should be working for the Weekly Standard. Oh, wait...!
:-D

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Actually, philosopher kings do not have a record of accomplishment; they do not know the workings of the system. Plato elevated them because they see the big Ideas most clearly. Thus, rule by philosopher kings has no respect for experience... or for reality.

Sam L. said...

The tyranny of the majority is overrun by the tyranny of the Judge.

"May has had exactly one job: to negotiate Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union. In that she has failed miserably, most likely because of her basic incompetence."
I suspect it is mostly due to her NOT wanting to exit the EU. And Peggy Noonan I have no trust in, nor belief that she might be reliable.

Macron: Have you read https://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/ for on-scene reporting?

"...Merkel. Her greatest contribution to her nation will be her absurd open arms policy, admitting far more Muslim migrants than the nation could assimilate, and thus launching a crime wave and a rape culture." That's in England, too.

" Yes, I understand that Barack Obama once said that Hillary Clinton was the most qualified candidate ever to fun for the office of the presidency." FUN?????? The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate strikes AGAIN.

"This shining 47-year-old intellectual..." OBJECTION, Your Honor! Supposition! I ask for EVIDENCE of that!

Miss Peggy has made my morning!

Anonymous said...

Since we're discussing Plato here...

Re: Politics is part theater, part showbiz, it’s always been emotional...

In other words, politics is the practical application of sophistry. Socrates, via Plato, criticized this aspect of "democracy" 1,500 years ago. Anyone interested in this might refer to the Socratic dialogues, especially the earlier ones, and the essays that often accompany them. One cannot absorb their contents and continue to take seriously anything a politician says, much less the common discourse of politicized people.

Dr. Irredeemable Dreg said...

Noonan is talking about "concrete political accomplishment". Her words, not mine. Ignoring the fact that Noonan immediately contradicts herself by dissing Sarah Palin, who was sitting Governor of Alaska (hick state, I know, not a Ferragamo bag in sight) and by most Alaskans' account doing pretty well at the job, in my view we've had quite enough - a surfeit, in fact - of the "politically accomplished" like Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, Ted Kennedy, and Noonan's hero, Mitt Romney - America's Most Impeccably Dressed Technocrat. According to Noonan, IIRC, Romney was going to win because yard signs in Florida or something equally inane. Piffle.

And ignoring several billion dollars worth of global real estate development in wildly varying political environments as, ironically, hard and concrete accomplishment is a feat achievable only by a select few academic theoreticians.

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Plato wrote 2500 years ago, not 1500 years ago. For my part I largely prefer Aristotle. I can name a few politicians who did not practice sophistry... like Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Let's not be totally cynical here.

Illuninati said...

Actually, our democracy or representative republic is probably already dead. Democrats in California have made vote harvesting legal for themselves. Since California has so many representatives in the House they have made it impossible for the states who have free and fair elections to win the house back. Now that the Democrats have learned how to stuff the ballot box in California there is nothing to keep Democrats from setting up the same system in other states.

Tilcut Hassayampa said...

Just a fact checking quibble.

Unless there are two Mika B's, Mika of MSNBC is the former niece-in-law of Zbigniew.

Zbigniew's nephew wrote a book about his time in Moscow during the 90's.

https://www.amazon.com/Casino-Moscow-Adventure-Capitalisms-Frontier/dp/B00DO4WLLA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544872332&sr=8-1&keywords=moscow+casino

It includes an account of how Mika (an IMF economist) guilted him into marriage, because biological clock.

Stuart Schneiderman said...

It's not a quibble... it's a welcome correction... thank you. Sorry for the misinformation.

Anonymous said...

Peggy Noonan. Didn't she also once write an op-ed critical of the musical selections of the orchestra on the Titanic as the ship was sinking, due to the fact that it was not sufficiently reflective of the more genteel time and place in which she preferred to exist? Now she directs her criticism at the man who actually volunteered to take the helm in an effort to try to right the foundering ship of state. Out of touch and anachronistic, to be sure. But do keep reminding us of her piffle, if for no other reason than to enjoy the nostalgia of a bygone age, when there was such a thing as America.

Sam L. said...

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Plato wrote 2500 years ago, not 1500 years ago. For my part I largely prefer Aristotle. I can name a few politicians who did not practice sophistry... like Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Let's not be totally cynical here.

Oh, Stuart... NOT being totally cynical is most exceptionally difficult these days, and we are weak...