Democracy Is Failing the Masses So the Masses Are Dumping Democracy.
Nha Trang, Vietnam, January 16th, 2025.
Salaroche

Corrosion does to metals what corruption does to human beings. Expose metallic objects to oxygen on a regular basis and they will begin to corrode, some of them faster than some others, but eventually they all will. The same goes for human beings. Expose them to accessible power or money or both on a regular basis, and they will begin to corrupt, some of them faster than some others, but eventually the great majority of them will.

Institutions are a different story. Consider the governmental institutions of the United States, the longest-lasting Democracy in the History of the world. The American institutions of government are not perfect, but they are strong enough to have held the country together for 249 years. Why would they have worked relatively well for that long and then suddenly start cracking-up in the year 2024? Have those institutions corroded over that span of time just like any metal object would eventually do?

Well, no. Governmental institutions are not made of metal. They are not even tangible, material things. Such institutions are mere conceptual entities usually outlined and explicated in writing. So, if the American institutions of government could not have corroded across time, what is it that made them malfunction to the point of permitting an amoral, convicted criminal, sexual-offender, insurrectionist demagogue assume the highest office in the land?

Well, actually, it is not the institutions that failed. Except for some tweaks and amendments here and there, the American institutions of government are basically the same as they were a couple of centuries ago. Institutions cannot corrode. What can corrode is the moral fabric of the human beings in charge of making them function well, in a process generally known as “Corruption”.

All governments, Democratic or not, have their own levels of corruption, but now it is increasingly clear that the more corrupt any Democratic country becomes, the more its people lose faith in Democracy. And that is precisely what is currently happening at world level.

According to some statistics, 20% of Britons under 45 would prefer to have a strongman in power, 33% of French people declare to have lost faith in Democracy, and some 66% of citizens in the 12 best-performing economies in the world are dissatisfied with it too (see here). On the home front, close to 90 million Americans, or ± 36% of eligible voters, declined to vote in the November 2024 elections claiming that their vote was useless, as electoral results are predetermined by the highly undemocratic Electoral College. In so doing, they just expressed their profound disdain for the American Democratic system (see here).

In this regard, the United States is a unique case that stands out above the others. There are even Constitutional mandates in America that make its Democracy particularly vulnerable to corruption, namely its campaign-finance laws and the legal ability that big capital has to constantly seek the elected officials’ favors through lobbying, which could easily be considered as legalized bribery.

Both those activities are protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution, even as they obviously put all political candidates and elected congresspeople on sale, at the disposal of the highest bidder. The Supreme Court itself has even officially declared that political-campaign expenditures are legal free speech (see here). When it comes to American elections, therefore, money does indeed talk and it often talks loud enough to drown the voice of the American people.

So, the remaining question is: Given that the more human beings are exposed to power and money, the more they get corrupted, on what side do you think those elected officials who perpetuate themselves in power will eventually stand? On the side of big capital or on the side of the people?

And what do you think the masses of people will eventually do when they constantly see that their elected officials keep catering to the moneyed classes at the expense of the people’s wellbeing? Naturally, they will come to the logical conclusion that all elected officials are corrupt and in the pockets of big capital and that, therefore, the whole democratic system is a sham and is no longer worthy of their trust.

In view of such catastrophic breakdown of trust, therefore, what alternatives to Democracy are there left for the people to choose from? Basically only one: A strongman. A demagogue who proposes to get rid once and for all of the corrupt pseudo-Democratic electoral process, promising them a brand-new sociopolitical system that will work for the benefit of the majorities.

Of course, we all know what such “brand-new sociopolitical system” usually turns out to be: An authoritarian or even dictatorial system of government where freedom of speech is largely curtailed, dissent is often penalized with incarceration or worse, freedom of movement can be restricted, and the whole economic system of the country is placed in the hands of a clique of corrupt individuals arbitrarily selected by the “dear leader” with the sole purpose of enriching themselves, their henchmen, and other associated minions. All of it while brazenly continuing to feed breadcrumbs to the deceived masses.

Democracy, damned if you embrace it, damned if you don’t.

Still, regardless of whatever deep faults may be embedded in Democratic systems, I still stand with Winston Churchill when he said that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried.” (see here)

Salaroche.