giovedì, dicembre 15, 2011

Being back is nice. I don't like people enough to like India. I was actually a little sorry to leave, as pointed out before, but then I got to Singapore, and suddenly there were no goats eating people's rickshaws or malnourished three year olds begging by the side of the road or tiny, bony women weighed down by cords of wood while their husbands walk ten paces in front of them, and I could breathe without choking.

It threw me into some strange conjectures and conclusions about how a fairly non-corrupt, efficient authoritarian government is a way better deal for citizens than a corrupt, inefficient democracy. There is no way anybody could pretend or argue that a Singaporean at the bottom of the social scale has less agency than an Indian at the bottom of the social scale, and I write that as someone who's aware of the problem of maid abuse in Singapore. It comes to an idea as fundamental as there being no agency, no self-determination, no control in hunger. I've never understood the thinking of anti-democratic pinkos and fascists so well. They have a point.

Yes, yes, I know, Singapore is tiny and India has 1.2 billion people in it. But that's sort of the point, isn't it? How the fuck are you supposed to run a country with any sort of useful centralized vision or plan or goal when there are 1.2 billion people in it? What is the point of a government governing 1.2 billion people that isn't deeply cynical on the part of the people doing the governing? The country's structure of government is based on the British exploition of the Mughal exploitation. It's fucked. A minority vote in a country like that could represent a group of people as big and as diverse as Europe. It's an even more fucked system than the idea that the US could somehow, theoretically be run in a representational fashion by two parties based on the east coast, because at least in the US the individual states are in a condition to do things besides fuck up and pocket bribes. 

So yes. I've never understood the thinking of anti-democratic pinkos and fascists so well, but I still do feel it's retarded. The problem isn't democracy, but the nature of the democracy. I feel myself as I age and see more stuff getting increasingly anti-federalist, and definitely increasingly feminist . . . but more on that when I'm not on my way to a BBQ.

6 commenti:

e.f. bartlam ha detto...

Interesting stuff...the last two actually.

Martha had jury duty this week...and after being involved in that process, with idiots from the voter pool...I suspect she's out shopping for a black shirt today.

She is over it with the People. :)

Dread Pirate Jessica ha detto...

The F-word just dodged jury duty and he's disappointed - he thought it would have been interesting. I think the process of getting waterboarded would be interesting but I'm still not willing to do it.

e.f. bartlam ha detto...

Martha ended up on a hung jury 10 - 2...with two men that, even after agreeing with every point the prosecution made, refused to change their minds or explain why.

One of em whispered to another juror..."the Lord put me here to do this." She's like wt....The Lord put you here to stand in the way of justice?

Man is she chapped...about wasting four days of her life, about the justice system is so vulnerable to idiots...that people like that vote, etc

Dread Pirate Jessica ha detto...

I blame movies.

Chris ha detto...

At least it could be said that large-scale democracies are an idiocy. As far as the United States, most Americans would agree that the representative system has failed and that something else needs to replace it. That's why you see the 50-50 split in votes and the rise of various marginal groups: the tea party and anarchists for two good and prominent examples. I would have never though that the US harbored that many true-to-form anarchists but a careful look at the supporters of the various occupy groups point to just that.

The two party system is sort of enforced by the electoral system and supported by our ideological homogeneity (the two parties aren't really that different from each other but on a handful of issues which are really marginal in importance to the future of the country or well-being of its citizens).

Mistress La Spliffe ha detto...

I think it's telling that very few countries, as they become democratic, have chosen a system like the US's, whose representational flaws are so apparent. Being an early democracy certainly doesn't make it the best.

There is a defensive line I often hear from Americans about how the alternative would mean descending into Italy-style chaos, but I think it's not appreciated there that MOST democracies are multi-party, many use proportional representation, and the smaller they are the more efficient they tend to be.