The Free Radical

It’s the first Tuesday in November, and my neighbours to the south get to vote today… such fuss and bother– not to mention the expense– when, ultimately, none of us lives in a democracy… and perhaps we never have.

(*To be read in a very snotty, condescending voice:) “We don’t live in a democracy; it’s a republic, stupid!”

Actually, it’s called a democratic republic, and its primary distinguishing feature is that the government derives all of its power from the governed through the auspice of voting. The whole point is that the public– the electorate– gets to decide how government shall proceed in its affairs, or at least grants consent to government’s administrative activities.

In order for any democracy to remain functional, the electorate must know the activities of its government– all of them. As soon as there is any portion of a governing body which operates in secrecy from the voting public, such government–as a whole– cannot accurately be categorized as being any form of democracy; it is a dictatorship… and very likely a covert tyranny.

At the level of nation states, none of us lives in a functional democracy. There is information about the activities of our governments to which we-the-public are never privy; we’re not allowed to know. Think about that for a moment. We don’t know what our governments are doing; we’re not permitted to know– usually for reasons of national security. Certainly, there are great portions of our governments’ activities that are public and transparent, but the simple fact is that anything which a governing body really wishes– or needs– to keep secret from the electorate can be sequestered and withheld almost indefinitely. We are never given the whole story, the complete picture.

Democracy– in order to actually be democracy– demands total transparency. It’s blatantly obvious; it’s just common sense. There’s absolutely nothing to debate here. I haven’t presented anything controversial; in fact, it’s incontrovertible. You may wish to argue for the continued need for secrecy within government, but please stop calling such a system a democracy (or a democratic republic, you ornery bastard); it is not; it cannot be.

In a democracy, the electorate must be perfectly informed that its foreign policy includes supplying arms to foreign militants or economic aid to rebel factions abroad. In a democracy, it is for the government to explain its actions fully, and the reasons for those actions, including the desired aims of such actions… and then it is the responsibility of the public to decide whether those actions are in fact appropriate. After all, those actions are being taken on behalf of the electorate– supposedly in their best interests. Only the electorate itself can decide the truth of this.

You can’t correct the situation you find yourself in if you absolutely refuse to acknowledge the actual circumstances of that situation. Will we ever demand an end to these sham democracies? Or will we just continue pretending that we have some say in world affairs and our own national interests? We’re being played… and it’s not even a very clever game! We are treated like cattle because we choose to exhibit the combined intelligence of cattle. Are governments wrong in referring to us as ‘useless eaters’? Wise up humanity!

There’s no rabbit hole here… just a refusal to look at the blatantly obvious. There’s no conspiracy theory here… just the cold irrefutable facts. It’s simple, straightforward, and monumentally stupid to just continue along as we have been. Your move, humanity.

And for those who just can’t resist a good rabbit hole… here’s a quick read that exposes a bit of what happens when factions of government get to operate in secrecy over long periods of time:

https://jhaines6.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/the-great-american-adventure-sm-book-format_pdf.pdf

(Note: Disappointingly, there are many, many grammatical errors in this eBook. Judge Dale really should have spent the twenty bucks for a good proof-reader. I’d have done it for free. Clearly, the good judge doesn’t really have a grasp on the proper use of apostrophes, makes very elementary spelling mistakes, and, as a retired federal judge, he shockingly uses– more than once– the word ‘succeed’ when he means ‘secede’. I figured a judge would know that one– especially since his tone is frequently somewhat condescending! Oh well.)