Democracy’s A Drag.
LET’S FACE IT, Democracy’s a drag – in every sense of the word. The beatnik sense: It’s drag, man. Meaning a state of affairs characterised by boredom and frustration, where something or someone stands between you and your desires. Then there’s the “drag” of play-acting, imposture and pretending to be something you’re not: He appeared in drag.Not forgetting the scientific definition of “drag”: something that retards or impedes motion, action, or advancement. And, finally, “drag” in its most common usage: to cause to move with slowness or difficulty. There’s more, of course, but you see where this is going.
For an increasing number of people, both here in New Zealand and around the world, Democracy is the problem – not the solution. It gets in the way. It’s fake. It slows everything down. Or, it just takes too much effort.
Out on the edge of our political culture – the place where the people who were evicted from Parliament Grounds usually park their camper-vans – Democracy is often dismissed as a chore and a bore.
That’s because representative democracy involves a lot of work. Founding a party. Drawing up a constitution. Working out what it is that you stand for. Collecting the names and addresses of more than 500 eligible voters who have also paid the party’s membership fee (receipts required). All of these things must be done before you can be registered by the Electoral Commission as a political party. And, of course, you’ve got to be a registered political party before you can field electorate candidates and/or lodge a Party List.
What a load of bullshit! How is people’s freedom protected by forcing them to jump through all these bureaucratic hoops? Obviously, it just a way of dampening the ardour and deflecting the energy of free individuals.
You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to see that the moment your movement agrees to adhere to the Electoral Commissions rules and regulations, the whole sick business of politics becomes inescapable. Factions form. Factional leaders appear. Factional strife erupts. The most ruthless and thick-skinned bastards in your movement end up running the show. You’re fucked before you’ve even begun to raise money and trudge the streets in search of votes. Which is exactly what the Powers That Be intended all along.
Democracy? It’s a drag, man.
Then there are the people who for whom Democracy is a Drag Queen.
The costuming is fantastic: Freedom! Justice! The make-up is perfect. Have you ever seen anyone who looks more honest, caring, or kind? But that’s all it is, folks – lipstick and a wig. Fake News. Forget the frocks, the face-powder, the accessories. Lady Liberty is really Captain Capitalism. And all those love songs to the people she belts out? Lip-syncs the lot of them. Captain Capitalism can’t sing a note.
Neoliberals also characterise Democracy as a drag. Not drag as in boring. Not drag as in fake. But drag as in something which slows everything down. Most particularly, as something which slows down or – even worse – actively impedes the operations of the free market.
That’s why Neoliberals do everything within their power to make “government of the people, by the people, for the people” a practical impossibility. Strip the people’s representatives of their power to interfere in the workings of free enterprise. Privatise everything owned by the people. Starve the state of the funds it needs to look after its citizens properly by cutting taxes – and then by cutting them some more. De-regulate everything you can persuade the voters is an impediment to their happiness – especially the overweening power of the trade unions! Make a bonfire of rules and regulations. In the immortal words of Mark Zuckerberg: “move fast and break things”.
Don’t let Democracy become a drag on your freedom.
And then there’s the rest of us. The ordinary, decent, conscientious participants in the electoral process, for whom Democracy has come to feel like a huge and heavy collection of failures and broken promises that we are compelled to drag behind us.
Every general election it’s the same. The political parties lay out their wares before us in the political marketplace. We lay down our money and we make our choice. If we’re lucky our party wins. If it loses, we shrug and say “there’s always next time”. The problem, though, is that, win or lose, nothing ever seems to get better. No matter which party occupies the Treasury Benches, the business of living just gets harder and harder.
There was a time – or so the history books tell us – when the promises of politicians meant something. Every three years the parties would issue manifestos stuffed with policies which, if they won the election, they would implement. The parties themselves were large organisations, with thousands of members, and political mechanisms for translating their wishes into policies, and policy into law. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked well enough to keep people believing that Democracy was something to be cherished.
Exactly when it all started to go wrong is difficult to pinpoint – although there are some who identify the election of 1984 as the beginning of Democracy’s decline in New Zealand. They point to the fact that what Labour put in its manifesto bore absolutely no resemblance to the policy revolution unleashed upon the country by David Lange and his Finance Minister, Roger Douglas. New Zealanders were told that there was no alternative to the Labour Government’s “reforms” – which must have been true, because in 1987 Labour didn’t both to publish a manifesto at all.
Others say that the rot really set in in 1990. Tired of Labour’s reforms, nearly half the country turned to the National Party’s Jim Bolger who was promising to restore “The Decent Society” that Labour had destroyed. Except that, even before all the votes had been counted, National began to break its promises. Instead of The Decent Society, New Zealand got “The Mother of All Budgets”. More of the same – only worse. Much worse.
Democracy no longer seemed to work, but the people could neither repair it nor improve it. They tried. New Zealanders abandoned First-Past-the-Post for Mixed Member Proportional. But, if anything, that only made matters worse. The decisiveness of governments elected under FPP, the power to keep their promises, was swapped out for government by coalitions, which, as everybody knows, can only ever be as honest as their most deceitful members.
Promises no longer mattered, because no party was ever in a position to keep them, or, at least, not all of them.
Until the election of 2020, when, in recognition of its superb handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government won an absolute majority of the seats. Now, at last, her party’s promises could be kept.
But they weren’t. Labour politicians and the governmental system they served appeared to have forgotten how.
And so we poor Kiwis keep trudging forward, harnessed like plough horses to this dead weight at our backs. This rotting corpse of Democracy that we are forced to drag behind us. It’s a sad story, but the saddest part of all is how easy it would be for the right person, using the right words, to persuade us to cut the traces connecting us to our democratic burden – and simply let it go.
The poor Kiwis are getting royally fucked over by the propertied class, and non-citizens have voting rights in “our” “democracy”.
So, that would put you in the “Drag Queen” camp, TRB? Democracy as fake news – Captain Capitalism dressed up as Lady Liberty.
taken further you get ‘dragon’
but its too late now
as everyone has taken the mark of the beast
then you have all the transgenders in politriks
perfect vessels for practising daily deception
dishonesty is the main component of psychic drag
I have said for years that democracy will always be the downfall of democracy.
Good to start this discussion in depth……seeing our MSM won’t do it.
Time for those who have the time and ability and understanding to make suggestions : but they need to be fully informed first …. You would qualify!!
After slogging through every page of AC Grayling “Democracy and Its Crisis” ( Professor of Philosophy, Master of the New College of the Humanities, London and writer of many books) looking for clues/ solutions / relevant wisdom to relate to our ” co-governance”- fast-developing situation , and considering the pros and cons of a written constitution – this is an urgent matter. We cannot allow democracy to flow down the gurgler without a challenge. New Zealand’s constitutional situation and crisis needs immediate exposure amongst all groups – not just the Iwi consulted in Matiti Mai report.
We have got to avoid the takeover by certain powerful, academic, influential, monied groups – those who have steadfastly worked and gained influence in the universities, govt departments, schools etc ……
We are facing the “dilema of democracy” – how to institute the people’s wishes – as of course parliament is composed of our servants, we choose them, but with the understanding that from then on we hand over the reins of decision making ………….presuming those hands are fit for purpose and can debate, and listen, and suggest, … using their education and experience to make the BEST decisions for every group in society.
But what a lot of wisdom we require them to have, we presume they have, – in order to make decisions for ALL multi-cultural peoples and socio-economic interests – for the entire nation.
Time to Debate!
R Ashby
The only way it seems to change Neoliberalism will be the collapse of Americas domination of the West.
The Empire is collapsing and it looks like the petrodollar is about to disintegrate ,so the collapse will accelerate, Here’s hoping…. the sooner the better in my opinion.
Nature abhors a vacuum …if neo liberal order collapses what then? There’s no substantive non authoritarian left extant. What is there to fill the void? Red Fascists of China, Black Fascists of Russia and all the Alt Right and neo Nazis of USA EU and all the little tinpot Dictators and wouldbe tyrants from Duterte to Bolsonaro to Orban etc.
” Starve the state of the funds it needs to look after its citizens properly by cutting taxes – and then by cutting them some more.”
Many of us would rather keep our taxes and look after ourselves, thank you.
Honest but not very socialist of you Andrew! ‘Looking after yourself’, eh? Does that include the socialisation of losses as well as the privitisation of profit?
Well, let the war of all against all, but yay a rightist who really does want to refund police and military? Oh no, but you’ll still pay taxes for them after all you need that thin blue line of the police and the backstop of the redline military. If extremes of wealth and Poverty grow enough the masses will rise up and pull the rich, the administrators of capitalism out of their cars, out of their castles, down from their ivory towers and rivers of blood will run once more.
Peter Mair’s book ‘Ruling the Void’ published around 2011 said it all, with statistical back up. You are quite right Chris. Perhaps we should have a go at Anarchy!
On a roll and now hitting your straps Chris.
“The decisiveness of governments elected under FPP, the power to keep their promises, was swapped out for government by coalitions, which, as everybody knows, can only ever be as honest as their most deceitful members.”
Dead right there Mr. Trotter, but I also think we lack politicians with conviction and beliefs instead we have poll driven politicians- eg Key and Ardern.
Indeed. It’s become such a drag, that the people of Tauranga City have been given a taste of a new form of democracy – the kind where there is no voting.
Well worth a read through, but essentially the money crew have spoken, and their wish has been implemented. Coming soon to a town near you…..
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2203/S00120/urban-task-force-commends-commissioner-decision-as-a-win-for-every-tauranga-resident.htm
To respond to this piece I want to borrow Wittgenstein’s “hinge” metaphor – “if I want the door to turn the hinges must stay put.” Wittgenstein was talking about epistemology, not politics, but I think the idea of a hinge can be applied to democracy as well.
With democratic politics one needs to distinguish between an argument about where the hinge should lie, and an argument about which way the door should turn. Between the late thirties and the eighties, arguments in NZ were all about which way the door should turn. The introduction of Rogernomics, with its TINA doctrine, was all about changing the hinge. Defenders of the current system now speak of “liberal democracy” as the thing being defended, and anyone who describes themselves as a “social democrat” is generally understood as describing a personal brand or intellectual preference – there is no real leverage for practical social democracy where liberal democracy forms the hinge.
I saw an amusing tweet that pointed out how populism was being treated as a threat to democracy when the two words mean the same thing; one in Latin and the other in Greek. But what the squawk against populism amounts to is “Help! Help! Some people we don’t like want to change the hinge!”
The best we can do under the circumstances, in my opinion, is to cling firmly to such things as due process etc., which are meant to be applicable whatever the form of democracy, and try to avoid getting over excited by window dressing presented to us as real change. It may well be that real change away from the developed TINA doctrine will begin at the local level, and with small victories that don’t initially pose a threat to the status quo.
Democratically elected governments are no longer servants of the people. If they ever were. Yes, indeed, a legacy of lies and broken promises. Is it that democratic governance is a kind of ‘wicked problem’, which according to Dr Google is a problem difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements. Democratic governance as a task of complexity with multiple interests and according to the theory, no single solution.
Notwithstanding the difficulty of the task, isn’t it more the truth that democratic governments simply serve their masters.
I have thought for a while that we must develop a new form of democracy so that we can get away from the auspices of career politicians and big money. I still think there must be a way and we should aim for it as without democracy we have no hope.
However, the more I think on it, I think the decline in democracy is just part of a wider process of decline seen everywhere. The breaking down of the social order as people no longer have the unifying beliefs of religion, tribalism, nationalism etc. Whatever you think of any of those things, if you pull out the threads of a quilt, you are left with hundreds of disparate pieces all trying to make their way without relation to anything else.
There is a hole at the heart of society that used to be filled with a sense of belonging, a wholeness etc. Until, that hole is filled we will be in decline.
As a kid at church, I remember the Minister saying with huge passion “Without a vision, the people perish”. It has always stuck with me. Our people and our society have no unifying vision or commitment to a vibrant shared future and no pathway for getting there.
Without that vision both personally and in particular, at a leadership level, its last days of Rome people.
Having a dictatorship would be a big step backward. Once you get someone like Putin in power, you can’t get rid of him