Democracy or Elected Dictatorship - 2003

Democracy or Elected Dictatorship?

What kind of political system are we really wearing? Local folk are becoming way too keenly aware of the local answer. No one really elected the B.C. Liberals to slash and burn our society in a style most reminiscent of conquering barbarians. Whatever this new bunch is up to, none of it’s about kind and gentle care of and for the people.

Harshness and cold hardness seem to typify the new math. We do have to admit, however, that our new master of cold hardness has suddenly adopted a new humility about himself. Unfortunately for him, he’s hung out a huge drunk and sloppy personal question mark for all to see.

He’s been forced, by the easily foreseeable and preventable ‘faux pas’, into a new era of at least pretending humaneness. In demonstrated fact, however, his government remains coldly mobilized in an agenda about decimal points only.

Not totally inhumane, however. He’s seen to the affairs of his own. His family will not suffer financially. His public paid pension is well assured. Equally comfortable are his fellow comrades in correction. Absolute job security is assured, for all of them.

Pity the poor hospital care worker, who, far from getting a piece of the nursing salary windfall, is instead receiving governmental rudeness in the form of a pink slip. Not immediately though. First they all get to watch this elected man tear up their legal contracts and dismiss them as mere casualties of the war on deficit.

Pity that our public can’t more easily tear up his own contract, and send him packing without pay. Who’s really overpaid, anyway? Once elected in good faith by well-intentioned voters, who believed what they were told, what recourse now to remove the ‘distruther’.

Is there some measure of hope left to the betrayed masses? Recall may yet teach the lesson not otherwise learned. The people want a say in what is decided. They at least don’t want the opposite, or some completely inhumane aberration, of what they voted for.

Recall is way too slow and cumbersome to create any real panic in the house of power. But if enough of it happens, this bunch might just have to re-think what they thought was their mandate.

We need a little reflection and self-evaluation to decide what our priorities really are. We’ve been tossed back and forth by our governments, with random impunity, for scores of years. We toss out one bunch, only to get another bunch we need to toss out just as badly.

One bunch puts our money in a big pile and burns it. The new bunch promptly installs a giant vacuum machine, sucking money out of every corner of our lives.

Our parks, our last true monument to a people-over-profit philosophy of life, are now gone to the moneychangers. Never again will we have that sigh of appreciation for a great benevolent sharing. We have to pay now, for everything, always.

This is not really good government. Not good democracy, anyway. Democracy, by definition is ‘Of the People, For the People, By the People’. Our present state of government is more a form of ‘Dictatorcracy’, where-in the elected one makes all the decisions, and dissensions be damned. We now have a government ‘Of the Privileged Few, To the People, By the Privileged Few’.

Not since the old days of coalition governments, has their been a real accountability. Present era governments, arrogant and unfettered, have had an almost absolute power.

What we need is the real democracy. We need the people to decide. We all have opinions, about every topic, every day. Individuals need to regain a say in all the everyday decisions affecting their common lives.

The people need more than a window of opportunity every four years to try once again for a responsible and representative government. The people need to communally decide whether to tear up contracts, or not. Communal conscience would not have allowed us to treat all those hard working individuals so callously and carelessly.

Tearing up legal contracts should have been a breach of good faith, and is an insult to all those workers. Collectively, we would not have wanted to do that, and we would not have done it. Our regal bunch even said they wouldn’t do that, and then they did it anyway. Too powerful to care that they lied.

We need the power of decision to be with the people. War should be for all to decide, not just the elite few, protected, and always kept very far from the horrors of their own choices. We must decide together, directly, whether participation in war is good or not.

The people should make the call on paying for parks, and on whether to have toll roads, and on whether to ship raw logs or not.

I am convinced we will not have good government, truly, until the people are re-enfranchised. We don’t really want to pick some dubious politician, from a list of similars, to make our decisions for us. We want to pick the prickly path ourselves. We want a direct say in the actual decisions made.

We know enough, collectively, to make the right choices. And if the people make a bad decision, the people can repair and repeal the offense with the same voting process. The people should be living under their own direction, in a world shaped by the collective will.

The people should vote on every significant issue. The people should make the budget allocation decisions. The people should decide the path, and intensity of, restraint. The people should decide the priorities of our lives. The government should lay out the options. The people should decide for themselves.

The people are smart enough to do all this. They can ‘be the government’. They know enough to have a say, and to bring that say out of the dark catacombs and into the light of every individual’s day.

Technology will now permit us, after centuries of waiting, to once again effectively drop our votes into the jar of decision. We have the technology, but not the political will. The political will, of course, is decided by the elected few, who don’t really want to lose their power. They like a world where everyone is truly equal, except they, who are a little more equal than the others.

I am convinced we are soon going back to real democracy. It is inevitable. Watching the marching millions should demonstrate the will of the people, all over the world, to have their say. I believe it will come.

People will eventually stand up to the tyranny of government by the few, and will force a rebirth of the pure form of democracy. Someday, the people will, once again, directly be the government.

In the meanwhile, we pick from the similars and hope they’ll have compassion, or brains, or heart, and that they’ll make right decisions. So sad that we, the people, remain so sorely disappointed, time after time.