When Did Democracy and Liberalism Become... Cringey?
While champions of democracy continue to tout its virtues as the bedrock of individual rights, even they can admit that the rule of law and accountability—and to a larger extent, contemporary democracy—are already far from their salad days.
Contemporary democracy is now associated with flimsy justifications for mass surveillance, ideological pathology, collective narcissism, and the insulation of the state from its citizens. This fall from grace is expected, as with any system in crisis.
For a so-called democracy "advocate," the individual is but an individual, with no history, tradition, no past, no present, or no future, at least according to the literature that they argue. Thus, their foundations, that of human rights, are rendered fragile.
Man, after all, must seek shelter first and then eat. Take these rights away, all other ideas inherent in human rights will predictably become a farce. Without a purpose and vision, an individual will eventually descend into psychosis, especially if times are tough enough.
Liberalism once lit the world with its bright flames and its hymnal to freedom, with Napoleon's old campaign buzzwords paving the way. Many fought and sacrificed for its endurance and persistence, in the hopes that this battle for freedom wouldn’t be in vain.
But freedom today has been reduced to the freedom of finance to regulate the market on behalf of society, with the latter collectively paying for the losses of the former, as was the case in 2008. It is the freedom of finance to have the political institutions at their pocket and acting on their behalf. It is the freedom to deny that contradiction, specifically class conflict, is the driver of historical development. The class struggle, it seems, is reserved more so now for theater halls, the Hamiltons or Les Misérables of the world, than for an objective script of life.
As such, liberal democracy's defenders are always at a loss, for it is already the status quo. The liberal democrat has difficulty understanding that ideas cannot become bread or soup. The liberal democrat will lash out at fake news and misinformation, when the liberal democrat's tolerance for journalism's transformation from investigative reportage and documentaries to click-bait and content farming to keep themselves afloat, knows no bounds.
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Apprenticeships and learning on the job, too, were once as valid as being a graduate of college or university. Now, the liberal democrat's obsession with education and credentials as a be-all and end-all, has made social mobility a chore. Unlike in the past,
Liberal democrats end up defending the system from the premise of continuity (an implicit admission that there is no alternative). But a civilization cannot endure if one's assumption will always be the fact that things will get worse. The argument for continuity, stability, and the precedence of established institutions, will continue to lose its audience if a liberal democrat cannot recognize the necessity of transformation, as his New Deal forefathers once did.
The Liberal democrat is also content to tolerate only two genders of the political divide: the conservatives and their obsession with foreign intervention, and the progressives and their fixation on identity politics. Both facets reinforce each other, always at the expense of basic needs, basic standards of quality living, and of basic means to make money and to afford to make ends meet.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion have become mere slogans that only appeal to “professionals,” who are oftentimes the most vicious defenders of the status quo. This is in stark contrast to the workers, who are either apathetic for justified reasons or are prone to push the red button to upset them.
The liberal democrat will always say that those seeking a means to overcome them are naive and foolish. But perhaps they are the ones who are naïve and foolish. As the populist insurgency conjures the spirits that haunt their dreams, the liberal democrat's appeals to moralism, remain unanswered. The liberal democrat tends to have a hard time articulating his or her views outside of the bubble. Such is the tragedy and comedy of the present era.
Unless the liberal democrat will adapt to face the current structure and foundation of reality as it stands, they are as doomed as the monarchists of the old. For one does not and cannot proceed from earth, up to heaven. One must instead begin from heaven, and down to earth. Absent this sobriety, the liberal democrat will continue to be in suspended animation, in an echo chamber that is torn apart by the furious mob, despondent of their conditions, yet enthusiastic for the liberal democrats' heads to roll into the gutter.
