Democracy failing! As it always has - and should.

Four words should dissuade anyone from believing in elections.  Herschel Walker Donald Trump.  In every election citizens hope that their political tribe will succeed in gaining enough power to halt the other tribe’s priorities.  Meanwhile disturbing trends in extreme weather events, species extinctions, refugee flows, food insecurity, energy prices, border control, health, economics, crime, corruption, misinformation, political polarization, truth decay, trust in government, conspiracy theories, loss of privacy, sanctions, and the endless evolution of weapons and pathogens –continue to worsen.

This cascade of connected troubles is simply unsustainable!  Just the perpetual and accelerating evolution of weaponry and pathogens combined – should crush hope for ‘democracy ‘and defending our national security with our existing political system.   Democracy is delusional. Security is an illusion.  We fail to grasp humanity's reality.  Everything is connected, interdependent and vulnerable.  And ‘everything’ means everything!  Until civilization inevitably collapses only individuals investing in weaponized technology (which is every technology), vaccines, building seawalls, rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, running elections, or creating partisan campaign ads will prosper.  And, use dark money, cryptocurrency, and offshore accounts (crime cartels, oligarchs, kleptocrats, violent extremists, and obscenely rich capitalists) to hide their profits globally -- hoping their wealth will protect them.  It won’t.  Friedrich Nietzsche  "Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man." 

The best that most citizens within any nation can hope for is mutually assured deficits or destruction.  This is inevitable given our current global governance system protecting 'national sovereignty' with the illusion of independence.  It is impotent at stopping global forces from upsetting every nation’s ‘special interests’ (economic, security, world standing, culture, or religious majority) or their borders.  Meanwhile, the protection of fundamental human rights and the environment vital to all things globally, goes virtually ignored.   

It should now be self-evident that multiple ungoverned global factors give rise to populist movements within independent democratic nations.  Interdependent global problems cannot be resolved with independent national governments using independent agencies.   And any nation, with political parties more committed to winning elections than resolving global problems, is simply delusional, unjust, and unsustainable.

It's not elections that matter.  The years between them could be used wisely by educating those elected to abide by our nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, and insisting on all laws they vote on to conform with the most forgotten phrase in the first paragraph of the Declaration - “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.  Tribal alliances make it impossible to agree on the golden rule.  The foundation of every religion.  And don’t mess with mama nature!  She and our immune systems got us here after 3 billion years of evolution.  But now, our super intelligent minds are literally killing us with creative principles and a sworn an oath to protect the Constitution.  A 260+ year old legal system with no real justice or the protection of God’s creation.

Abraham Lincoln wrote that our Declaration is our “Apple of Gold” and the Constitution its “Frame of Silver.” Thomas Jefferson wrote that ‘every law and constitution’ should be rewritten “every 19 years”.  Because “the future belongs to the living, not the dead.”

The persistent exponential global growth of technology is almost incomprehensible by the average voter or policy makers’ linear and reactionary thinking.  What’s vital is understanding reality.  Then operating on its fundamental principles.  No political party does this.  Not even the Green party.  Democracy simply doesn’t work.  Dozens of political, historic, and philosophic pundits over millennia have asserted and documented this.  ‘Democracy’ is a nebulous word.  Like ‘peace’ or ‘terrorism’, it can mean almost anything to motivate anyone.  

Politics was originally intended as a tool to keep us from killing one another.  We have two basic means of resolving differences.  Agreements or aggression.  Reliable agreements require reliable communications and a fair and nonviolent means of enforcement.  Democracy yields neither. Engineering a sustainable system will require using words/phrases with well-defined meanings.  In this context, the well-worn phrase “Rule of Law” (vs ‘law of the jungle’) holds potential if defined as Supreme Court Judge Anthony Kennedy once did when asked the question “What makes the rule of law most effective?”.  He said it required three essential elements.  Laws made and enforced by a democratic process, applied equally to all, and intended to protect basic human rights.

Thomas Jefferson defined democracy as “two wolves and a sheep, voting on what to eat for dinner; Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.” Democracies have persistently abused majorities.  With voting majorities grossly ignorant of issues or candidates and about half even voting.  It’s luck if any referendum yields progress.

Even without misinformation and conspiracy theories, electing a wise candidate would be an accident.  Dean Acheson once said, “We need pragmatic idealists more concerned about the future of humanity than the outcome of the next election.”  

A wise voter would understand there are basically 3 kinds of truth.  Our personal truth (what religion we follow, or not), our political truth (which party we like), and last, the “Truths” that are “self-evident”.  Like a child should not die before their parents.  Or maintaining our freedoms and security requires virtue and responsibility.  

There could be no greater human virtue and responsibility than achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals ASAP. They are the only comprehensive global approach to sustainably “secure the Blessings of liberty for ourselves and our Posterity”.   This is a self-evident truth that our Constitution, as is, has failed in achieving any of its seven intended results listed in its preamble.   One wise soul once said, “The truth will set you free.” Another said, “but not before pissing you off.” 

“Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency’s director in a speech Oct. 29, 2021. [CISA is our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018]