The Uses of Democracy

Anyway, not that we expected that much to be different. We at least expected there would be at least some, if only cosmetic, differences between the political tribes. That there would be choices between the candidates put up for our perusal when we are allowed to pretend that electing one over the others will somehow make any meaningful difference to what we like to call our lives.

Back in the old Soviet days, the Western media and political circus used to like to sneer at those one party states where the leader would be elected with a huge percentage of the popular vote. The leader would then go on blithely ignoring those (nominal) voters and go about doing whatever he and his cronies could get away with. Of course this is very different from our own – and they like to tell us much better system – where the leader gets chosen by the largest minority of those who can be arsed to vote. The winner of the election then going on to do whatever he and his cronies can get away with.

This, political analysts claim, proves the inherent superiority of our political system over all the others.

There are two main problems with democracy, of course, those being:

1./ The voters.

and

2./ Who they get to vote for.

Both aspects lead to us getting the sort of politicials that are the least offensive to the greatest number. We have only a ‘choice’ between bland cloned automatons that know nothing of the world beyond the incestuous and cosy political world and are barely human on any normal scale of measurement.

Still, could be worse. At least this way we are spared from rule by the deadliest of all political animals, those who believe in something. For those that believe in something are – so often - prepared to see so many others suffer and die as they march us on though these deserts towards their vision of a promised land.