Meaning of Democracy

The meaning of democracy seems to be shifting in these contemporary times, making footing difficult. Questions arise and fall away, to be replaced by other questions. Is it more democratic to forbid abortion than to guarantee health coverage? Is it less democratic to sit out an election without voting than to deliver votes to party bosses to ensure a winning ticket? Perhaps the saying is right that says, “the Democrats want to run our public lives and the Republicans want to run our private lives.” The guarantees in the U.S. Constitution that we the people will ensure domestic tranquillity and promote the general welfare seem more like suggestions now. The real concerns seem to be balancing the national budget and finding blame that will stick on one party or the other for wrongs politicians believe will resonate with the voting public.
Power politics is a more useful term to describe today’s interpretation of the meaning of democracy. The cowboy nation of the United States is the preeminent superpower in the world. The biggest and best six-guns, for sure—but are our boots getting a little splashed on as we belly up to the bar? Others appear to be moving away from self-absorption and the tough-guy demeanor.
Some other democratic countries openly scoff at our rough antics. They are fed up with our Cuban embargoes, failure to act in Bosnia, failure to pony up the dough we owe the United Nations, and they don’t seem to like our insistence on forging trade agreements that force American imports on unwilling partners, like insisting that inferior American rice be traded to people who have developed their own exquisite grains for over 2,000 years.
Other democratic countries look at us and think they can get away with more now that the United States is tougher, too. Capital punishment? Not a problem. Imprisonment for long periods on flimsy convictions or even no convictions? Not a problem. The United States can hardly get high and mighty on human rights when it is building prisons at record rates and some states are throwing drug possessors into prison for over 100 years! Cutting short public assistance to the poor in the U.S. is just another signal that it is okay to rough up the general populace in other countries possessing less evolved forms of democracy. If we don’t value the humanity of our citizens, why should they?
If it appears democracy is coming off the high hill and settling into the lower regions, what is society to make of these changes? For some, less reliance on government means greater individual freedom to act as one pleases within the confines of one’s own perimeters (private land, private home, corporation, cult or religion). For others, less reliance on government means living in the streets, early death, or the proverbial dependency “on the kindness of strangers.” One group gains while another loses. That is a lower form of democracy, sloping away from ideals and Constitutional promises, and settling instead for cold cash transacted in walled enclaves. In this landscape, the poor are discarded through neglect and the rich become indifferent. It is hard to tell who is punished more by this process and who loses more humanity.¬¬

Into this environment of governmental devolution come politicians and the media, who seem to be in a race with one another to capture American sensibilities. Defining democracy by limiting it to small bites, the American public is being spoon-fed to death. National politicians are prone to calling upon God and asking God’s blessings for the American people, though apparently not all of them.
Some politicians speak easily of “family values” and tell us what we think, want, and need. With candor and apparent sincerity, they characterize gay and lesbian citizens as undeserving of full citizenship. What can they be thinking? They demonize immigrants while knowing new and vital talent has always come into the county by this means. They denigrate the poor, knowing that bad education, low wages, and low quality health care will increase the numbers of poor, increase suffering and further alienate the middle class. Democracy takes a hit.
Somewhere between politicians and the media are the religious leaders who use broadcasting to influence the political process. With high moral impunity, they slash away at diversity of viewpoint, the right of privacy, and the behavior of those who do not believe in the particular brand of religion being promoted. Democracy takes another hit.
The media pretend that image approximates reality and that information approaches the level of news. The sound bite has replaced sound reporting. Broadcast journalism, particularly the group reporting from the White House, seem to have lost the connection between the public’s right to know and their right to slide into gossip by means of the unsupported short news segment. At one time, reporters confined themselves to repeating what the president said. Now the public hears what the president “admitted.”
Aristocratic reporters who cover government moonlight on the speakers circuit, pulling in six-figure incomes. When it comes to informing the American public, we hear their opinions and colorful twists of language, which help to make already suspicious American listeners more wary of slick presidents and hard-boiled First Ladies, but these things also make us less informed on what the president is proposing. Public opinion polls confirm that the general public knows less about American foreign or domestic policy than it does about the personality of the president. Democracy takes another hit.
Print journalism is going through its own devolution. The previous separation of news from opinion has now been blurred. Like the rules for the citizens of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, only those with the longest memories will recall that unsubstantiated allegations in a newspaper belong in the opinion pages or in paid advertising.
The corrections needed in the media will have to be more explicitly defined than these few examples. The gathering and production of news for the reading and listening public will have to undergo a vigorous housecleaning, and the many superstars put to work earning honest money. It will take more time to rehabilitate the errant religious leaders and politicians, but before the preamble to the Constitution becomes a sound bite, we’d better get cracking.