Democracy and a life's worth
Not to long ago, on my way to university I was casually chatting with my dad while the radio was on. I broke all of the rules. You’re not supposed to bring up politics, not now or later. But the radio host’s voice was so infuriating to me. He was ranting about how Juan Guaidó; a politician who claims to be Venezuela’s president despite the fact he never won any popular vote; is the legitimate ruler of the oil enriched country. The radio host boosted Guaidó’s speech and message, saying that he is living proof that honesty, transparency and genuineness will always lead to a good government or social outcome.
This is hugely misleading and hypocritical. Guaidó Is not legitimate, he is an imposed pawn, fake, a pragmatic and economical tool for the powers that be. I said this out loud and my father agreed on Juan’s Hypocrisy, but said that sometimes the people don’t know best and they are better of in the hands of experts.
This seems to be a popular sentiment, at least here on Mexico. It is somewhat accepted, although that mainly in ideological grounds, that maybe democracy is not so functional after all. A new president was voted into office here in Mexico, he goes by the acronym A.M.L.O. (Andrés Manuel López Obrador). Amlo is a left leaning, working class and people-first politician, formerly mayor of Mexico’s capital city. But the status quo remains center right here in Mexico, to many Amlo is our very own Donald Trump. Mexican reactionaries see Amlo as dumb, incompetent and an idiot - mainly for his belief and trust for the people and left leaning policies. If you remember the 2016 elections in the U.S. and the countless memes and snowflakes getting triggered, the madness in the air would resemble the reactionary’s response to Amlo’s current term.
I often hear on the radio how increasing health care budget via taxes is borderline socialism. The fact that we already have something resembling universal healthcare in Mexico and that it mostly works (and has personally saved many family members’ lives including my own brothers life in his infancy due to poison) and that is here functioning should re-calibrate the popular notion of what socialism means to our people. Regardless of our current popular health plans, somehow Amlo giving scholarships to kids who simply sigh up for it is like building gulags or whatever. I consider Amlo to be not left enough, he still would like to please the Bourgeoisie and middle class reactionaries instead on focusing on the working class majority.
So our country half approves half fears our president’s vision. The right-ists claim democracy failed this time. And even some of my liberal friends like the general feminist moment but still think Amlo is too dumb to reform our little piece of the world. Even the center left Mexican liberals despise him and mock him anti-SJW Carl Benjamin style.
On our car conversation, me and my dad stood for discourse, my father representing popular ideology. He argued that maybe the Venezuelan people don’t know what they need or want.
But they elected him, he should rule as president if he was democratically elected. I replied.
- Maybe a developed county can make things right.
What about their sovereignty as a nation? Can’t they make their own decisions without interference?
- But, son, maybe you have heard this new philosopher that said that democracy is not the best system, but the least worst system. Even the Greeks acknowledged the limits of democracy and they had a word for it and all, word I cant remember, but nonetheless they acknowledged its not a utopia.
Greek democracy wasn’t perfect, not because of the flaws of the people, but because people weren’t included, like salves and women. If democracy is fundamentally flawed, why add women and slaves to it?
- Well, adding women and slaves was a good thing…
If so, if an inclusive democracy is good, then why is democracy as a whole not? Can’t people choose, no mater their gender or status?
- But, son, that very same philosopher also said that democracy is not flawed, but the vote is flawed. Maybe each vote should not be equal. An informed person’s vote is “worth more” that an ignorant voter. Well, here is where I dropped you off.
I garbed my bags and opened the door and the conversation was cut short.
Is it true? Are some people’s vote worth less? Well for that to be the case, then each person should have a different level of experience. Maybe a blind person can’t speak of color, but that claim is loaded. It presupposes there are some people out there with a full understanding of the world. Non-blind people exist, but non-blind and non-biased people don’t exist.
Because each person has their own experience, their piece of the pie. I would even go as far as to say that the pie is not even real to begin with. In Constructivist terms what’s out there is not the real. But a social construction of reality. The world is not empirical, not made of matter. Because our senses always have a blind spot. we can never see the wold as it really is, so instead of trying and failing to see the world as it “is” we construct a wold for ourselves. Therefore a reality is not out there to grasp, therefore nobody can grasp what’s not there, meaning nobody really gets it, nobody would qualify as a full vote. Because nobody can grasp reality, we an only interpret and construct reality. Meaning that making different people’s votes worth more than others is fundamentally flawed. perfect voters don’t exist, because perfect people don’t exists. Ask any economist: information is asymmetrical, this pints to the fact that information is not “too hard” for some folks or that some people are inferior. But that if we treat information as equal we get an unequal graph. Fully informed voters don’t exist, not even the politicians themselves have all the facts.
To know all the facts points to a god, not to an informed voter. For an entity to know all the facts we would have to attribute divine characteristics to this subject, this so called informed voter would need omnipresence. But we know gods don’t, cant and should not exist. So we cant leave an election to divine inspiration.
Maybe when this unnamed name dropped philosopher said not all votes ought be equal he did not meant it as in equal in information’s worth - but unequal as in not tied to the 24/7 news media. Maybe he meant not equal as in electoral politics and not epistemology. If this is the case the picture also falls short. This notion of the media savvy voter as the good voter (and whose vote deserves more value) is solely dependent in the media’s ability to portray non-biased truth. But the papers don’t say the truth unlike Bono told you on new years’. In fact the media as a whole is not looking to provide fair grounds for people to make informed decisions, but to present a limited set of cards from which to draw our game; and the house always wins. The game the media presents is rigged, your enemy is not the inmigrantes or the communists, but the system that has you in chains. The new’s media don’t emanate unbiased information, but indoctrinate and control. you could say, as Chomsky did on his famous book, that they manufacture consent. If all you ever watch, read and see fits in the pro-corporate, neoliberal box, you will never even think of an alternative word were you are not exploited and used. The media reinforces the status quo and creates “capitalist realism” as Mark Fisher put it: A fake cense that there is no realist alternative to capitalism; don’t be anti-capitalist, be a realist!
A media savvy vote is not a vote grounded in facts, but a drone vote grounded on ideology. If we create a system were media savvy votes are worth more than non savvy votes the we would push the population towards acting out like automatons, incapable of original though and only able to regurgitate what they saw on the news. We would create a dystopia whilst trying to run away from another “disyopia” called democracy, boo!
Why is the will of the people scary? Why do we want for some people’s votes to be worth more than others? To me this suggestion is also based on pure ideology. It should be no surprise that a political and economic system based on winners and losers (capitalism) would like to produce a voting system where inherently some people are worth more than others. If our initial paradigm is hierarchical, we will eventually end up on an unequal, unjust, imposed hierarchy.
It is oh so sad that we feel so firm in our capitalists belief and ideology that we can´t even look each other in the eye without subconsciously thinking them are worth less than us. We must think that my life is worth more than yours, and that I would violently triumph in the Colosseum if I had a go at it. We can’t trust democracy if we don’t value each other’s lives, decisions and autonomy. hence we hate and separate, rince and repeat.