Democracy Takes it on the Chin
Filed under: Zimbabwe
The past month or so has been a really rough one for democracy.
The month started out with an "election" in Russia in which there were no debates and no opposition candidates. A proud KGB spy guaranteed that his hand-picked successor would "win" by indicting his own former prime minister on fraud charges and striking him from the ballot, and when his successor takes over he'll remain in the government as prime minister himself -- meaning that, in fact, there won't be any transition at all.
And it ends with an "election" in Zimbabwe where the regime, though more civilized than Russia's in that it allowed an actual opposition candidate on the ballot and allowed it to become known that it had lost control of the parliament, refused to release results of the presidential poll and launched a crackdown that included rounding up foreign journalists and seizing the records of the opposition party.
Russia as Zimbabwe with permafrost. Zimbabwe as Russia with elephants.
But it's not the action of the barbaric dictators that troubles democracy. She's been staring such cretins in the face for centuries, and they only make her giggle. Time and again, she's raised her sword and struck them down.
Martin Luther King used to say that it wasn't the forces of evil, like the KKK, that most troubled him, it was the forces of good. His leading kvetch was about the people he called "white moderates," those who undermined the reform movement not by attacking blacks but by calling for peace and order and thus playing into the hands of the racists. They talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk, refusing to give King a hard target much like the Viet Cong in South Asia.
No, the troubling thing about these elections is the role the people themselves are playing. Surprisingly, the window for change appears to be wide open in Zimbabwe, yet the opposition party itself only claims to have taken a paltry 50.3% of the vote. In Africa, that's well within the margin of error, and means that in fact Mugabe still has a significant core of support within the nation he has brutally raped for many years now, bringing it to its knees. One is reminded of the woman who, for inexplicable reasons, chooses to stay with the husband who savagely beats her every night, even until he kills her, or kidnap victims who become sympathetic to their captors.
And Russia is even worse. Russians, of course, could hardly express any support for legitimate opposition candidates with their votes, since every single one of them had been excluded from the ballot before election day. But Russians, despite their horrific recent history of Soviet mass murder unrivaled in world history, didn't raise a single word of protest as that barbaric neo-Soviet process was carried out, but instead responded like sheep to the commands of a proud KGB spy that they anoint his hand-picked flunky with total power. You may point out if you like that Russians admire and respect Putin, so it's logical they would follow his advice, but they did exactly the same thing eight years ago when Boris Yeltsin told them to anoint Putin, and they hated Yeltsin like the plague.
And what does it say about the people of Russia that they admire and respect a KGB spy who is supporting rogue regimes in places like Iran, Venezuela and Syria, provoking a new cold war with the West rather than address the nation's demographic crisis? There was a time when it was possible to imagine that Russians were suffering not because of their own misconduct but because of the abusive actions of a few misguided leaders. That time is past. The people of Russia are collaborators.
What we see in these events is democracy's vulnerability: the very people it lives for. Dictators throughout the ages have used the argument that people can't be trusted to leverage their power, and certainly such contempt for their own people is what motivates Vladimir Putin and Robert Mugabe. But the forces of autocracy always forget three things.
First, they forget about America, which bestrides the world like a colossus specifically because it has fully embraced the principles of democracy, demonstrating clearly that the world's "huddled masses" can be capable of greatness when given a real chance. And they forget about all of democracy's other brilliant success stories, from Japan to Israel. Pajamas Media recently reported how people are abandoning Islam in protest of its radicalization. Democracy works! Quite often, given a chance, it kicks ass!
Then, they forget about history. Every single time it has arisen, without exception, dictatorship has destroyed itself. Russian dictatorship has destroyed itself twice in the past century alone. Africa is a boiling cauldron of self-destruction. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And finally, they forget about natural rights. Because, in the end, democracy isn't about doing what's most efficient, it's about doing what's right. How dare anyone suggest that he "knows better" how to live another person's life than they do themselves? If a country is going to be destroyed anyway, why not let its people themselves be the ones to do it?
Above all, though, one can't escape the conclusion that the failures in Zimbabwe and Russia are not entirely the fault of the people there, but ours as well. Have we really been aggressive enough in pointing out the failings of these regimes to the people who live under them, showing them that there is an alternative, and making clear the consequences they will suffer by embracing barbarism?
We haven't, just as we weren't aggressive enough in dealing with tyrants like Hitler and Stalin in the past. And until we do, we shouldn't be surprised that the bed we've badly made is uncomfortable to sleep in. We shouldn't blame democracy, we should blame ourselves.
Many of us don't even take the trouble to do something simple, like reading a blog. Many of those who do don't take the trouble to add a comment condemning these atrocities when they occur. Others comment, but don't go beyond that to take any tangible action like donating money or joining a protest march or voting for a candidate pledged to change the status quo.
We're failing right along with the people of Zimbabwe but, unlike them, we don't have to face the immediate consequences. More's the pity.
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