Is democracy "majority rule"? Or something much more complex and effective?

I'll append a few current politics comments at-bottom, especially about the just-culminated and hilariously shameful beginning of the latest U.S. Congress and the Kevin McCarthy Speakership. But overall, this post is about an aspect of Democracy that (alas) is far too misunderstood, even by the myriad citizens who benefit from it.

== What actually is modern ‘democracy’? ==

Knowing that their aging and ill-educated cult is in demographic collapse, the Foxites are now frantically railing against Democracy itself (along with science and every fact-using profession), equating Democratic government with Mob Rule. 

"We are a republic, not a democracy!" they shout, while defending gerrymandering and other cheats to rob voting power from 'easily-manipulated' urban populations in favor of 'Real America.' (Meaning rural/red counties, of course.*)

The latest meme in support of this agitprop campaign is a purported quote from Thomas Jefferson:

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

As Snopes reveals, not only is this 'quotation' nowhere remotely attributable to Jefferson, it runs diametrically opposite to the philosophy of the 3rd president, who called for Athenian styles of democracy, rather than a Federalist style Republic.  

(Elsewhere I go into several other supposed quote-aphorisms that are flat-out lies, used to diss our Enlightenment Experiment. On the other hand, in emocracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville appraised the versions of active democratic assembly that he saw and pproved mightily.) 

Of course, those pressing this purportedly Jeffersonian meme against democracy are also ignoramus-ingrates, yowling at the very same experiment that gave them everything. Moreover, even if Jefferson had said that, it would have nothing to do with us! 

Because we do NOT have 'majority rule,' in the USA! 

== Not Majority Rule ==

Rather, by design, we have a somewhat more grownup and subtle form of democracy called Minority Veto. 

Find me a time in recent US history when any proposal or opinion held by 51% of the population got saddled on an intensely angry 49%! Generally, depending on its size and intensity - and in the absence of flagrant cheating - large minorities of voters can prevent any "51 percent" from imposing actions that deeply offend them. 

Indeed, the art of politics is all about negotiation and compromise, so that a 51% majority can grow sufficiently larger, while the objecting minority's crucial product of size times vehemence lessens considerably. Only then does any measure generally pass to become law.

This can happen through removal of objectionable features, or else with tradeoffs... you get something in return for getting out of the way and allowing the majority's endeavor to pass. Or else by pushing reforms incrementally  forward, until factors like public opinion can get used to a new idea.

Yes, this often means that progress is slowed, until this kind of negotiated consensus can take form incrementally. Take a famous example - LBJ's Civil Rights Bill of 1964. (Watch the great Bryan Cranston film "All The Way"!) 

In 1964, with the JFK assassination still resonating, Johnson finally had the coalition he needed in order to pass a bill... but just barely! In order to get something before the mood passed, squeaking through an immediate banning of segregation in services and accommodations and public places - by itself the greatest advance of American freedom since the Civil War - LBJ had to strip out the provisions dealing with Voting Rights. 

Naturally and understandably, activists howled over the omission! MLK himself had to step up and calm them down, just enough to keep the coalition together. Whereupon, with a subsequent landslide in the general election, in their pockets, LBJ/Humphrey et. al. were then able to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act! (A law that Republican judges and fanatics are now subjecting to full-pressed assault.) 

That maneuver was a classic example of what I described above. A one-year delay that was morally indefensible was also essential, in order to get what a majority of the public by then wanted: incremental progress to fight a century of far worse betrayals.

Likewise, LBJ was able to get NASA fully funded, winning over southern senators by putting most NASA centers in southern states.

Likewise, folks nowadays seem to forget that Bill Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy re gays in the military was a huge step forward from the situation that preceded it. An incremental step that quickly accustomed military folk and reduced objector vehemence, setting the stage (very soon, in fact) for later complete abolition of another horrific injustice.

It's a list that could go on and on, including the vital Pelosi bills of 2021 and 2022, that entailed so many compromises to keep aboard both Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders... though the results were inarguably great for a nation whose decision making and problem-solving processes (called "politics") had been deliberately sabotaged by the other party, for 20+ years.

== Our enemies notice this, even if you don't ==

Is Minority Veto actually functioning, right now?

 OF COURSE NOT! 

At present, the Mad Right that has hijacked U.S. conservatism uses their "49%" minorities - sometimes 51% majorities but far more often 40% or less - to prevent absolutely anything from happening in the public interest. Not without herculean feats, like those Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden achieved in 2021 and 2022, over the tightly disciplined uniform resistance of a GOP schooled under the Hastert Rule to never negotiate. Never compromise. 

(Think I am exaggerating? Subtract the Supply Side tax grifts for oligarchy and howls of negativity toward Obamacare and the IRS, and what actual assertive legislation can you recall being on the GOP agenda, in this century? While you are at it, look up Dennis Hastert, whom the GOP made head of their party and House Speaker, sealing the never negotiate rule. Look up his bio all the way to the end.)

The destruction of politics as an art of consensus building in the USA is the core objective of the oligarchic worldwide putsch. Having lost the popular vote in all but two national elections across the last 35 years, and with Democratic policies vastly more popular among citizens, the Republican tactic under Minority Veto is to emphasize the second factor in that crucial calculus of Minority Veto -- size times vehemence -- in order to block any action by the majority, indeed, any assertive political action at all.  

Vehemence has been stoked to a degree that amounts to Phase 8 of the American Civil War.  

The key point to take away from all of this is that the enemies of constitutional democracy - one that is about constantly adjusting and negotiating improvements - are inveighing against the last best hope of humankind, compared to 99.9% of grinding human history. 

When Peter Thiel says "I no longer believe democracy is compatible with freedom," what he means is that neither are compatible with the oligarchy's planned return to 6000 years of feudalism.

== And the relentless return of traitors ==

Amid the roil of modern politics, someone has to point at the unusual perspective. For example, I am less fixated on clowns like Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are surface shills for deeper sicknesses.

Want a more worrisome symptom? Here's more utter hypocrisy from the Very Worst American. George Will often blathers some things that are obviously good/true, in order to build sly credibility for his endlessly creative and brilliantly parsed incantations in support of treason.

Meanwhile... wasn't that 15 ballot torment of Kevin McCarthy fun? Pundits discuss McCarthy's long list of concessions-to-radicals, in order to squeak into Speaker with a minority of members' votes. Concessions like theatrical Hunter Biden 'investigations' and putting jibberers on the Rules Committee. Plus at least 5 'contract' promises to slash spending and balance budgets. 

One problem. Despite blowhard spews, Republicans have never - across 40 years - been as fiscally responsible as Democrats. Ever, even once. They do have one huge budget cut in mind. (Well more, if they succeed in cutting aid to beleaguered Ukraine.) No, it's not repealing Obamacare; that goal is never mentioned now that the ACA is hugely popular and effective. 

No, the aim is to eviscerate the IRS which got full funding last year, after decades sabotaged by the GOP on behalf of oligarchs, whose Cayman Island grift accounts will now get scrutiny.

So, if the IRS finds scandalous crimes that include GOP pols, might that shred McCarthy's coalition? Get some nutters jettisoned? Get others to finally find their nerve to make that Goldwater Party of decent conservatism?

Hey, I am a science fiction author. But clearly, I also do fantasy.

We must restore at least some Majority Rule... and a fresh approach to shattering the blackmail rings?

One of the finest essayists in America - or the world - is Rebecca Solnit. In her recent article - she dives into a major advantage and positive trait of modern, western democracy, that has been turned against it, metastasizing into a cancer that could kill both it and us all... the institutional innovation that protects minority interests from being too-readily ruled - even trampled - by any majority. 

Simplistically, 'minority veto' means that that majority must try to negotiate and calm any vociferously objecting minority - perhaps with tradeoffs or reciprocal wins - until either the number of objectors or their passion diminishes below an acceptable level. (This can also be done - as in California - with super-majorities.)

Alas, as with free speech and traditions of Suspicion of Authority (SoA) and several other wholesome Periclean traits, minority veto has been cynically manipulated by enemies of the whole Enlightenment Experiment, encouraging a rising hatred of majority rule in any form. On the right this is propelled by a rabid froth of fear of the 'mob' - a mob that is somehow simultaneously made of grunting immigrants and vast swarms of the brainwashed college educated.

This has built into the latest recrudescence of America's congenital sickness - the Confederacy - whose fervent use of minority veto in the 1850s kept slavery in place long after a majority of white voters wanted the abomination ended.

As usual, Solnit and I emphasize slightly different angles and aspects. But she has the greater soap box. So why are you still here? Go read a really good writer.

== About the Court... and a fresh approach to blackmail? ==

Those liars who lied in order to get on the Supreme Court… and the lying senators who abetted Moscow Mitch’s schemes… need a little (just a little) sympathy, since it is so blatantly obvious that all (or nearly all) of them are being blackmailed. Still, it is blatantly now time to get busy crushing the anti-freedom, anti-science, anti progress and anti-American side of this civil war.

They refer to their own special madness as The Great Awakening. A reference to several other times in US history when fervid tent revival-meetings were about anything but individuals gaining more sapient alertness. Ironic also in that they despise "wokeness." 

Avram Davidson put it very well in his first Peregrine novel, set in the failing late Roman Empire - "in times such as these, a man feels the need of something to cling to, even if it be another man's knees." 

You know I have beat the drum about blackmail many times, in hope that Prez JoBee might offer pardons in order to lure victims into the open and shatter the extortion rings that clearly control hundreds of sellouts like Lindsey Graham. Clearly I am getting nowhere! But a friend offered up a suggestion yesterday that I hand't thought of.

Instead of calling for courage and patriotism from those who are being successfully blackmailed... how about summoning forth those on whom blackmail attempts failed?

Attempts to lure married men with attractive come-ons? That's often how it begins. But if you were in a Moscow hotel and turned down the inevitable offer (to have sex in a room with hidden cameras rolling) isn't that something to testify - even bragt - about? The initial phases of most of these traps are innocuous enough that even if you fell for one, you can still say "F-you and be damned!" and often they just go away.  

Has that happened to you? If so and if we got enough such stories, but it finally be enough to break this thing open? 

== All sides need to me more, not less, TUCE… ==

Guy I know offered four words: “The Undeniable Counter Example (TUCE).” Should be self-explanatory!

And yes, there are countless TUCs for every blanket assertion yammered by sanctimony junkies on both the far left and the entire mad-right. In fact,  I use TUCE a lot. It works fine against grand generalizations. 

Alas, though, there is a flaw. Those who had bandied the grand generalization can respond with: “Well, there are exceptions to everything. The general assertion still stands!”

What's even more effective is the "anti-TUCE". Demanding that your opponent name one counter example to your own well-chosen generalization.  

Let me give one example of an effective anti-TUCE...

 "Name one fact-centered profession that is NOT under attack by Fox News."  

Scientists, teachers, journalists, civil servants, law and medicine professionals... and now the intelFBIi/military officer corps…. it is blatantly obvious that the mad-right attacks ALL fact professions, including that last set (calling the dedicated men and women who won the Cold War and the War on Terror “deep state” traitors.) 

Their inability to name even one exception to that challenge is utterly damning! It proves the point that today's Mad Right is the most fiercely anti-fact cult in US history.  

But even if they named one exception (I can), it would still leave the point standing. The general assertion still stands

I offer a couple of dozen more in Polemical Judo. 

== I don’t endorse this… but… ==

A member of this blog-community posted on his own site an ‘open letter to the next mass shooter’ that offers that next aggrieved nut-case a chance to do something more provocative and better remembered – even historical – than maniacally seeking death-by-cop over the bodies of innocent school children. Reminiscent of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” which both enraged readers in the 19th Century and brought home to the British public what they had complicitly allowed to happen to millions of innocent Irish folk.

And finally…

 == My 100th donated pint. ==

To commemorate this milestone I brought cookies for the fine folks at the Blood Bank, and they gave me an ice cream cone! (After the ritual draining.) 

Feeling fine, so my next target is 111!

(Obviously, I could work on my selfie skills.)

“Spoils” and Trump's worst sin, spitting on the defeated.

Amid this Twilight Zone episode we’re living through, what’s my personal grievance? I had hoped by now to swing my attention fully back to writing science fiction, rather than living it.

Oh, there were chillingly accurate SF’nal forecasts. Not Orwell (not yet.) But I’ve mentioned Robert Heinlein’s prophesy of America enduring “crazy years” and a fundamentalist tyrant “Nehemiah Scudder.” Even more depressingly apropos is Ray Bradbury’s “The Sound of Thunder.” Watch a short film version here. ‪

Some have sent emails commenting on how my “Holnists” in The Postman resonate with the burgeoning alt-right. Others ask: is this the end of Pax Americana, when a foreign power controls one - and possibly all three branches - of U.S. government?  Further - some ask – what about my conjecture that centuries only start exhibiting their main ‘theme’ a decade and a half in? Oh, please, let 2016 not represent this century’s theme.  

But my “classic” getting the most attention - “Honoring the Losing Majority” - asked a simple question: 
     
When a competitor or candidate wins on a technicality. Does he owe any consideration to the majority who voted against him? 

== What gracious (and smart) winners do. ==

That 2004 essay reads bizarrely apropos for today, including ruminations on the Electoral College. Swap a few words - “Trump” and “Bannon” for “Rove” and “Bush” - and the syndrome looks chillingly familiar.

But let’s start by reprising what I suggested that a mature and honorable person might do, if he or she won office, over the objections of a majority – or even a large minority. Imagine such a President Elect making the following pledge:

"I promise to ask my honorable opponent to pick a panel of Americans who will have control over my appointment calendar one afternoon per month. And I expect my opponent to serve on that panel. On that afternoon, I shall meet with -- and listen to -- any individuals or delegations that panel may choose. Millions of Americans will then know that I do not live in a tower of ideological isolation. I will answer questions and hear dissenting points of view."

Such a pledge should hold, even if you win by a landslide! It would cost a candidate or president little to give this much to the losing 40%. (Or today’s nearly 60%) There’s no obligation to act on what the delegations say, only to be accessible, listening occasionally to more than one ideology. More than one brain trust of cloned advisors.

Indeed, the legitimacy of any administration will be enhanced if we see the president receive articulate, passionate emissaries, representing diverse opinions and walks of life. So. If that is clearly what a mature and honorable leader would do, what are the prospects of this coming true?

== Pretty much zero ==

Clearly, Donald Trump’s answer is a loud and angry “no!” To the victor go the spoils of conquest: spolia opima — an ancient doctrine of ruthlessly finishing off your opponents, seizing all their goods and treating them as enemies to be crushed, lest they ever rise again.

The so-called Spoils System outraged Americans in the post Civil War era, till at last reformers instituted a protected Civil Service, safe from wild swings in the political caste. Then followed a century of consensus — that domestic peace and simple fairness call for the losing side to see its interests at least mentioned in the halls of power. Even if you won in a landslide, as Lyndon Johnson did, in 1964, and Ronald Reagan in 1984, you’re not supposed to rub the noses of 40% of American voters in their loss.

Hence, under Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama, the Secretaries of Commerce were businessmen and women. Entrepreneurial programs were staffed with entrepreneurial people and the Small Business Administration by small businessfolk. Agriculture Department heads have generally spent a lifetime helping farmers. The Council of Economic Advisers had samplings of all doctrines. Under Eisenhower and (yes) Nixon, the Labor Secretary was a union member — even if accused by the left of being a tepid compromiser. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (founded by Nixon) was someone who cared about the environment, and science agencies were headed by reputable scientists.

This reversed a bit under Reagan, especially re: the EPA. But it was both Bushes who began savaging the principle, for example appointing to run the IRS and SEC folks specifically charged with undermining the auditing of banks, Wall Street firms and the rich. Saudi influence was masked by State Department and intelligence officials, and so on. This would have been bad enough, if George W. Bush, hadn’t won office, in 2000, under questionable circumstances, clearly opposed by a majority of those who voted.  I wrote “Honoring the Losing Majority” at that point, in protest to immature and dishonorable behavior.

Still, Bush at least spoke a few words about consensus and accommodation, appointing cabinet officials who gave some appearance of professionalism, before proceeding to violate the principle. His enemies-lists were discreet and he did not dare to threaten (as DT has) the Civil Service, universities and the Officer Corps. (Eventualities that have stunned even the Drudge Report.) While he lied incessantly, for the most part, W did not screech and howl.

== The cult of personal pique ==

That principle - of showing at least some respect for the losing minority - should be part of any decent society. And not just in the Executive Branch.  Among the many “reform suggestions” I’ve proposed – fruitlessly - over the years, was for the majority in Congress to give the minority party a fair number of their own, discretionary subpoenas and the ability to call some days of hearings. (You in today's majority will want this power someday, when you drop into the minority again.) But one thing at a time.

How urgent is the principle today, when technicalities (like the distribution of electoral votes, foreign meddling and a high likelihood of “rigging”) have just disenfranchised not a minority, or a small majority, as in Gore-Bush 2000, but a very large majority of voters? Would not an adult - even a partisan one - want to offer olive branches, like my once-a-month meeting agenda, or possibly even granting the loser some say in cabinet picks? 

Not, apparently, Donald Trump, whose thin-skinned vengeance fetishism has combined with almost slavish currying of favor by the ruling axis of power on the right. From the Koch/Murdoch/Adelson/Goldman oligarchy to the Russo-Saudi oilocracy, Trump’s cabinet choices show none of the populist autonomy that his braggadocio seemed to portend. Except for appointing the former head of World Wrestling — something that was pure, refreshing and his old self. The Kochs and Putin had no role in that one, I betcha. Nor did they command the most delicious of last week's theatricals -- the utter public humiliation, over frogs legs, of Mitt Romney. 

If Democrats understood judo, they’d go limp, right now, and let Trump’s opposition come from the Bushite faction. The man is volcanically reactive! So long as the loudest enmity comes from his left, he will reflexively scuttle right.

But we aren’t here today to dissect this fellow’s personal or psychological motives.  The topic is “Honoring the Losing Majority.” And it is a sad commentary on our times that few have even raised the subject.  

Go give the original essay a look. Swap a few names and words.  Then ask yourself: “Are liberals so much better?" Sure, they have on their side all the scientists and folks who actually know stuff.  And soon - if Trump proceeds on-trajectory - nearly all members of the intelligence and law communities, as well as most of the United States military Officer Corps.  Yet, have you seen any fresh ideas from the Democratic establishment?

The dullard-insipidly unimaginative campaign run by Hillary Clinton’s people - along with the generally clueless reactions by most liberal pundits - reveals just how desperately the Union needs to rediscover agility, just as it had to do in the 1860s, when faced by an all-too similar confederacy, aiming to re-institute feudalism.

As happened in 1861 and 1862 -- and in 1941 -- expect disasters before, as past Americans did, we figure this out. And stand up.

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Lagniappe:

“You know, comrades," says Stalin, "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how."

(Note: while there is no proof Stalin said this, it is entirely consistent with his tenure - under Lenin - as Communist Party First Secretary.)

Modern(ist) Political Subtlety - or Why "Majority Rule" is a Deadly Ruse

And now for something topical about the rationalizations used by those who either despise - or don't 'get" - the Enlightenment...

===Minority Veto===

This week's Senate imbroglio - featuring efforts by the majority to bypass a democratic filibuster of administration judiciary appointments - can be viewed as yet another front in the Great Big War Against Modernity.

On a purely political basis, this entire stance is simply stupid. Even George F. Will has complained that the GOP position seems to assume there will never again be a democratic president, with a democratic Senatorial majority. Under those circumstances, would not republicans wish for a way to stymie the worst, most doctrinaire and ideological court appointments? A method to force some kind of negotiation and compromise, or at least respect for the views of a large and strong-willed minority?

Either their sense of history is extremely myopic... or else they think they know something that we don't know, about the political shape of our future. (Ponder this paragraph at leisure, till that last remark makes sense. And shiver.)

But let's consider this issue at a more abstract level. In a very general sense, what we are seeing is one party - claiming justification based on a slim electoral majority - asserting that they thereupon have a sweeping mandate to rule without negotiation or compromise.

Let's break up that last sentence. One of the great, consistent patterns of human governance, seen in nearly all cultures, has been a tendency for some group to claim justification based on __________, and thereupon assert that they have a mandate to rule without negotiation or compromise.

Fill in the blank. What justifications were used by past ruling groups?

Rationalizations ranged from royal divine right to the verdict of the battlefield, all the way to some inherent, logical superiority of "philosopher kings." Often these excuses were articulated with great care and passion by clever, nerdy fellows - by priests, wizards, or court ideologues, who thereby won the privilege of hanging around real power - the big fellows who got their swords, or vast estates, or trust funds mostly the old-fashioned way. By inheritance.

This pattern was so universal that it really deserves to be noticed and discussed.

Instead we have allowed arm-waving romantic rationalizers to distract us with a myriad details and fast-talking incantations. Theologians and Marxist theoreticians. Aryan mystics and Hegelian dialecticians. Machiavelli, Confucius, Rand, Mao, Strauss and all their ilk wove verbal spells to justify the use of raw power by those who already had it - or soon intended to get it - free of any obligation to negotiate with those who might suggest alternative methodologies of statecraft.

I mean, really, were the Communist theoreticians who justified a narrow clique of Party Nomenklatura families any different from the churchmen who preached in support of the slavocracy in the Old South, or the Social Darwinists who wove excuses for robber barons in the 1890s?

This commonality keeps being obscured by a bewildering storm of particulars. Which, of course, serves the common interest of their Ideologist Guild.

Alas, we keep buying into one or another of these trips. Take the latest version: majority rule.

Now, please. Let me avow that majority rule is vastly better than any previous political oversimplification. Indeed, it began as a reform generated by the Enlightenment, won at great cost, overcoming desperate opposition by every kind of social elite. In other words, majority rule was better than minority rule. (But is there something even better still?

No quasi-mystical catch phrase ever contained more essential wisdom than the one asserting that states derive their legitimate powers from "consent of the governed."

But what does 'consent' mean? Majority rule helps guarantee against the worst kinds of tyranny - those featuring iron-fist repression by a truly narrow, unaccountable and coercive elite. Hence, if we ever do have a dictatorship, it will cover the fist with silken gloves, and suffer great lengths to convince us that "we" (the majority) voted for it.

Still, that will not protect minorities. Nor will it ensure that statecraft is performed with attention to CITOKATE. (Criticism is the only known antidote to error.) Indeed, it is quite possible for majorities to be flat out, cockeyed wrong.

Moreover, majorities can also be manipulated. Whether based on ethnic, religious, sexual, lifestyle or political differences, it is easy to create a sense of "us" and "them". Such distinctions can be leveraged through propaganda, as Hitler used his campaign against Jews, gypsies and other minorities, to mobilize large portions of Germany, both before and after the election of 1933.

Consider the statement above. "Such distinctions can be leveraged through propaganda" to manipulate majority opinion. Are we immune? And by "we" I mean even we modernists? (If you do not ever doubt or question yourself, you do not belong on this list. Go away. Now.)

Are "modernists" immune to propaganda? No! We are human and thus can be swayed. Indeed, for most of our lives we have been subjected to "pro-enlightenment propaganda" in the greatest indoctrination campaign of all time!

Some of you have heard my riff on this, many times. But it bears repeating. So, next time we will talk about Enlightenment Propaganda... how effective it has been... and why this very success may be the reason why the romantics are now fighting back so hard.

Continue to: Part II: The Propaganda of the Enlightenment

or: The Myth of Majority Rule Part III

See more: Politics for the 21st Century

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A couple of science notes that you'll find amusing, in light of some of my novels...

*Augmenting the Animal Kingdom Wired News May. 3, 2005 **James Auger in his controversial new book, Augmented Animals, envisions animals, birds, reptiles and even fish using specially engineered gadgets to help them overcome their evolutionary shortcomings. He imagines rodents zooming around with night-vision survival goggles, squirrels hoarding nuts using GPS locators and fish armed with metal...

*Chimeras on the Horizon, but Don't Expect Centaurs New York Times May 3, 2005 *** If research on human embryonic stem cells ever gets going, people will be hearing a lot more about chimeras, creatures composed of more than one kind of cell. Such creations -- of pigs with human hearts, monkeys with human larynxes -- are likely to be unsettling to...

*A journalist tracks down the source of a claim, often cited by
greenhouse denialists, that most of the glaciers in the world are
growing: This one is very important!