Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

    Frank> I am just saying that many countries have rather
    Frank> interesting ways to conduct democratic business and that
    Frank> the United States government for reasons that are a bit
    Frank> difficult to comprehend seems to want to convert the rest
    Frank> of the world to something they call democracy.

I don't see why they're difficult to comprehend.  "These are the only
ways we know."  "They work for us, so they should work for you, too."
"If you do things our way, we know how to work in that system so we
can do business."  The second is naive, all three are very self-
centered, but hard to understand?

    Frank> So, we old Europeans get a bit jumpy because we wonder
    Frank> whether democracy out of the barrel of a gun isnt a bit of
    Frank> a contradiction in terms.

That's superficial.  Whether it can be implemented in practice is
rather dubious, but (taking the current state of affairs in Iraq as
given) I think if the U.S. were an _honest_ broker, it would take
exactly one election to get to a genuine, lasting, Islamic democracy
in Iraq.  Iraq has historically been a modern country in _all_
respects, no?  This one, too.

But if the U.S. leaves now, will there be a democracy in Iraq next
year at all?  You can probably guess what my prejudices are, so why
don't I just leave that as a question, and maybe somebody with some
qualifications will hazard an answer.

    Frank> And it kind of taints the results.

Oh, come on.  If you look at the official rules and allow in the usual
complement of international pollwatchers, you get a pretty good sense.
I think the voters (to the extent they care about fairness rather than
winning) will figure it out.  The sore losers will cry foul no matter
what; they do so even in countries with hundreds of years of democracy.

The reason why people consider elections run by the U.S. as tainted is
because they are, not because the guards at the polls were American
soldiers.  The base rules are more or less rigged to generate the
outcome the U.S. wants, eg by excluding extremist Islamic parties.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. sometimes looks the other way
at more direct interventions by its favored parties.  But if the
U.S. ran a fair election, I'm willing to bet the voters would
recognize that.  It wouldn't necessarily serve American interests, in
the short run, anyway, but I bet the people would remember.

    Frank> The state of US democracy is something many of us are
    Frank> worried about as well.

Huh?  U.S. democracy is alive and well, and reasonably representative
of what the American people wants over the long haul.  Why would you
think otherwise?  Because old leftists like Tom are embittered?  Or
because American democracy gets different answers from the European
version?

Look, Americans do worry about health care and employment, and there
is a large minority which is completely disenfranchised from both of
those.  But this _is_ the outcome of the democratic process; most
Americans do not want more socialism than they've already got in the
abstract.  In fact, they've already got more than they want, because
it's easier to put together a coalition to protect an entitlement than
to remove it.

On the other hand, mostly Americans don't really care what their
government does overseas, as long as the flow of oil and cars is
uninterrupted, and the number of flag-draped caskets is fewer than the
number of murders in LA per day.

Is it shameful that the disenfranchised minority are overwhelmingly
black, Hispanic-surnamed, and/or female?  Of course.  But it's not
undemocratic.  Does it suck that there is not universal health care?
Of course.  But it's not undemocratic.  Does it suck that American
military power is killing Iraqi civilians?  Of course.  But it's only
undemocratic in a weak sense---the "demos" doesn't necessarily
approve, but it's not strongly opposed, either.  And of course in the
early going it was very much in favor of the invasion.

    Frank> I tell you, we are all getting Iran completely wrong...

Just the way you're all getting the U.S. wrong.  They're both
dangerous, complex nations, with explosive possibilities.  Some for
good, but given the nature of explosions, mostly scary.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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