Who should lead the Democracy Narrative? #404

People's representation has been held as the greatest aspiration by the Western commentators who were bursting out of the colonial privilege. It was laudatory.

For, democratic representation has an opportunity to provide voice to those who did not have means. Equality and justice become possible.

But today democracy is under threat. Not because the structures have broken down, but because those who are administering them have changed the goal posts.

If democracy is a combined vector of the voices within a society, then every resultant vector of the voices in a certain time should be acknowledged and allowed.

But is that how the Western democratic "experts" look at it?

No!

For them, Donald Trump who has become the manifestation of the voice of over 50% of Americans, equates to a "breakdown of democracy" as opposed to a consequence of the democratic freedoms itself!

This is what the society needs and wants.

To deplatform those whom we don't like is not "saving democracy" but dismantling its fundamental structures!

Who you are is what you have to decide. For, it will have major consequences on the future of the world.

State of American Democracy

The majority of the Americans are unanimous.

Which is as rare as citing a Yeti in the Himalayas these days.

The belief that brings them together?

On the brink of collapse!

Though Americans don’t agree on many political issues, there is one issue both Democrats and Republicans acknowledge poses a major problem: the state of American democracy. According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 69% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans think the nation’s democracy is on the brink of collapse. And the figure for independents, 66%, isn’t much better. (Source: A majority of Americans think US democracy is broken. Here are 12 ideas for repairing it / CNN)

For a country where the electorate unanimously believes its own democracy is on the brink of collapse, it is quite amusing, if not nonsensical, to see that country funding the installation and promotion of democracy in over 100 countries around the globe!

You see the truth is that this idea of democracy is just a fake idea designed for subversion in other countries.

If it was such a great miracle potion, wouldn't it have made sense to have some of the great things at home for a change?

National Endowment for Democracy was meant to do - along with USAID - what the CIA used to do earlier - by funding foreign trade unions, cultural organizations, media, and intellectuals. Now they do it via NED by funding trade unions and business corporations. Of course, NED has it covered both ways in a partisan political system by funding the Republicans and Democrats.

So if the one country whose own democracy is anything but working goes around slapping that model on everyone else as a subversion technique, then you have to wonder - does West really have a democracy worth emulating?

American Exceptionalism and Export of Democracy

The American politicians, brimming with American Exceptionalism but in their infinite magnanimity have said that while democracies share "common features", every culture has its own version of democracy. The underlying message here is that while others may have a democracy, it is a contaminated version. Because the real democracy is in the US and Europe. Which, in itself, is a farce!

Every American politician, no matter what their party or religious affiliation, states unequivocally the creed that underlines American Exceptionalism.

"America is the Greatest Country in the history of the world."

How you define "greatest" is left to one's imagination for the one thing that has enabled every other dominance is the military might and ability to wage wars at will against anyone the establishment wishes to and destroy nations without any care of retribution or moral responsibility.

This clip from the American series Newsroom is very instructive of how the claim that "America is the greatest country in the world" comes instinctively to all Americans and any view to the contrary is nothing short of shocking. A mic drop moment!

The quest and the urge to beat others to claim oneself to be the best is central to all the misery that mankind has faced.

Colonialism, wars, destruction, genocides - they were all a direct product of this idea of Exceptionalism.

It is a sick mindset that has somehow been held on a pedestal in the West. And out of the colonial experiment, which had an inherent disregard for humans, came the concept and imposition of the Western style of democracy.

That it disregarded the unique strengths and diversity of cultures never occurred to anyone as all these "democratic pioneers" were obsessed with their own claim to greatness.

This claim to exceptionalism may have been due to the fact that "Western Liberal Democracy" came about after World War II. In a way when Europe and most of the world had been routed.

Sheri Berman has written a book “Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day" where she argues that wars were an important cause of the social situation in which democracy came about.

“Democracy and Dictatorship” makes clear that it was only after dictatorships and war eliminated the social and economic remnants of the old regime that the stage was set for the construction of the new domestic, regional, and international orders that were finally able to provide the foundation upon which stable liberal democracy could be built in Western Europe during the postwar period. (Source: "Building stable democracies is a slow and painful process" / Washington Post)

So one is constrained to look at how the victorious pushed their own ways and ideas over all others. That superiority of ideas is collectively known as Western Universalism.

Why is the European Democracy in a Mess?

We know that American democracy is a mess. But as per many "liberal commentators", the European countries also have their democracies in a mess.

The few elites in the European Union have decided that there is a certain way that democratic countries need to make their decisions and that is the reason why Hungary and Poland have always been dinged.

The fact is Hitler was not an aberration of democracy but a result of collective angst. Just as Donald Trump was.

I went to Wisconsin in 2017 and I saw firsthand the sad destruction of middle rural America. From Chicago to Milwaukee, the entire place was an economic war zone. Homes boarded up, businesses shut down, and million-dollar homes lying in tatters. The destruction was so stark that you couldn't miss it.

That is when you realized how a decade of rule by the Democrats had destroyed the industry in middle America. That set the stage for Donald Trump as an idea.

The victory for Trump was a way for the disenfranchised electorate who had been duped by the labor-leaning Democrats to show them the middle finger.

Which is what Hitler was as well. The previous regimes had capitulated to blackmail in the Treaty of Versailles.

Outcomes that they desire. And in that fetish for ideological one-up-manship lies the destruction of democracy.

As bad as Hitler was, the collective consciousness was rearing for vengeance. Collective Vengeance is the result of gross society-wide injustices perpetrated by outsiders or the country's leaders.

Sometimes, such upheavals, lead to positive step changes. Sometimes, they don't.

When the root cause analysis blames society for the consequences of injustices and the resultant upheavals, then we set in motion debilitating scenarios.

That is what European Union and US analysts who are dinging Hungary and Poland are doing.

Europe today is in an economic mess. Most importantly due to their demographic shift.

A demographic shift is not just an addition of more "people". But a change in value systems and social structures themselves.

For example, the Muslim population in Europe is increasing at a rapid pace. By 2030, it will be 8% of the total population in the European countries.

Some studies suggest that the composition of Muslims in Europe will be anywhere from 7.4% to 14% by 2050.

Given that Muslims who are coming into these European societies are from origin countries that are fundamentally opposed to democratic polity gives us an indication of where the political consciousness in that continent is moving toward.

So what does this tell us?

Europe of tomorrow will be closing down and the factors behind the "Democracy Backsliding" of Hungary and Poland will come out to be the least important causes.

The current leadership in Europe has been divorced from the people's aspirations. This writer is trying to make an argument where he is trying to show how the EU is run by the council which is appointed by the leadership of the member countries.

European loyalists will lambast me for saying this. How dare I describe the EU as a democracy-free zone, when it is run by a Council comprising elected prime ministers and presidents, a Commission appointed by elected national governments, and a Parliament elected directly by Europe’s peoples and vested with the power to dismiss the appointed Commission? (Source: Europe’s Fading Democracy / Project Syndicate)

But in that lies the problem.

There is an elite leading the Europeans who, even though they seem to have distilled from the local democratic means, are far removed from the local aspirations.

And in that Europe has set itself up for institutional non-democratic existence.

Therefore, the countries and societies that have acquiesced to accept self-destructing social vectors are democratic and those that have pushed back are "nationalists" and undemocratic.

That is an important reminder for us in this debate on democracy.

United States of America - a Case Study

Knowledge and education are at the foundation of Western Democracy. James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the US Constitution had said: “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy.”

Let us do a quick analysis.

Half of the US adults are married today as opposed to 72% in 1960. And interestingly the level of education has a direct correlation to the sustenance of marriage.

Only half of those who do not have a college degree are married in the US today. And that is a majority of the Americans. 69% of them!

Families are not being formed anymore since at least 22% fewer adults are getting married now. And the percentage of people not in marriages is rising because those pursuing higher education is not that high in America.

In the larger US population, the ethnicity-wise breakdown of the Americans with a bachelor's degree is quite instructive. The percentage of Asians (which includes Indian-Americans) with a bachelor's degree is 3 times that of the Hispanics.

And, it is quite startling that the percentage of Americans growing the most in the US are Hispanics. Almost 2 times of Asian Americans.

As Figure 1 shows, annual white population losses over the four years between 2016-17 and 2019-20 were 129,000; 252,000; 290,000; and 482,000. Together, this loss of more than 1 million white people outweighs the white population gains of the decade’s six earlier years, leading to a likely first-ever decade decline of the nation’s white population when the final 2020 census results are tallied. In contrast, nonwhite race and ethnic groups increased in size over each year of the decade, and were responsible for all of the nation’s population growth between 2016 and 2020. Latino or Hispanic Americans led all groups, with annual gains at or approaching 1 million a year. Asian Americans added between 300,000 to over 500,000 to their population each year, followed by Black Americans, persons identifying as two or more races, and American Indians and Alaska Natives. (Source: All recent US population growth comes from people of color, new census estimates show / Brookings Institute)

Quite clearly the next generation of Americans are starting off with a disadvantage. The next generation will not be as educated as the previous one and quite clearly not as educated as the generation in Asia - India and China specifically!

So will American democracy remain intact? Thomas Jefferson said that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed and that consent is possible because of education.

Subversion by elites

The Twitter Files that Elon Musk unveiled showed how the elites in the US - one party in power, the FBI, and the social media companies - had come together to deconstruct democracy within the US.

Here is the list of those files.

1. Twitter Files Part One
2. Twitter Files Part Two
3. Twitter Files Parts Three and Four
4. Twitter Files Part Five
5. Twitter Files Part Six
6. Twitter Files Part Seven
7. Twitter Files Part Eight
8. Twitter Files Part Nine
9. Twitter Files Part Ten

Here is an excellent summary of what these Twitter Files shared. You can see a progression of how comprehensively and hopelessly one party (Democratic), the FBI, and the technology social media companies were sabotaging American democracy and polity.

So when you go through, you can think about these communications as something that the trio of Democrats, FBI, and Social Media companies were caught with their pants down. If this was an expose from FBI vaults, it would have been an equivalent of the "Mitrokhin Archives". It's just that this was opening up of the emails and documents of one private company!

That is what the Twitter Files laid out.

But how did the Democrat-leaning media portray this? By whataboutery and semantic jugglery.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells has a pet peeve - that the Twitter Files documents were shared only with "Conservative journalists" while he also suggests that "Conservatives have cheered their publication, while many progressives have either ignored them or rolled their eyes".

The interesting thing is that the answer to his issue with who published it is in his next line of how the different types of journalists chose to treat it.

Weren't the strident partisan ways of the "Progressive journalists" the central reason why exposing the Twitter Files became imperative and in a way automatically decided the journalists who did it?

Musk set at least one condition: that the reports be published first on Twitter itself. Because of this, and because the journalists he chose tend to write polemically and have fierce online cliques of supporters and opponents, the Twitter Files have arrived pre-factionalized. Conservatives have cheered their publication, while many progressives have either ignored them or rolled their eyes. But as they have been published over the past several weeks, the files have been at once among the most interesting and the most complicated journalistic documents of the Trump era: complicated in that their tone is often propagandistic and their evidence frustratingly partial but interesting in that they show how various political actors sought to influence a period in global politics (beginning, roughly, with the Syrian war and continuing through the pandemic) defined by fights over communication and information. The files cut a haphazard tunnel, in other words, through one of the richest substrates in politics, and readers are left to try to bend, squint, strike a match, and dig through it to try to figure out how exactly information on social media was managed during this era—and, crucially, whether that era has ended. (Source: "What the Twitter Files Reveal About Free Speech and Social Media" / New Yorker)

The dissonance between the narrative and the work of those who call themselves Progressives is obvious. Here is the analysis by the New York Times.

Dharmic Context of Democracy, Equality and Justice

The Indian view of democracy and equality was informed not just from the material standpoint but from the perspective and experience of harmony in consciousness.

Distortions of mind and propaganda are one thing. Consciousness - the purity of it - when experienced and expressed collectively can, however, enable a human being to express her/himself fully.

That is why it is extremely important to investigate how the Indian view of democracy has been expressed in the scriptures and tradition.

The central concept of collective rule and justice has been defined as a manifestation of संजानाना (Samjnana). Samjnana was called the "deity of democracy" by Dr. Radha Kumud Mookerji, an Indian Historian.

Rig Veda’s book 10 hymn 191 shares three verses written by Sage/Rishi Saṃvananah.  These are those verses and their translation by Wisdom Library.

सं ग॑च्छध्वं॒ सं व॑दध्वं॒ सं वो॒ मनां॑सि जानताम् । दे॒वा भा॒गं यथा॒ पूर्वे॑ संजाना॒ना उ॒पास॑ते ॥
सं गच्छध्वं सं वदध्वं सं वो मनांसि जानताम् । देवा भागं यथा पूर्वे संजानाना उपासते ॥ (10.191.2)

“Meet together, talk together, let your minds apprehend alike; in like manner as the ancient gods concurring accepted their portion of the sacrifice.”

स॒मा॒नो मन्त्र॒: समि॑तिः समा॒नी स॑मा॒नं मन॑: स॒ह चि॒त्तमे॑षाम् । स॒मा॒नं मन्त्र॑म॒भि म॑न्त्रये वः समा॒नेन॑ वो ह॒विषा॑ जुहोमि ॥
समानो मन्त्रः समितिः समानी समानं मनः सह चित्तमेषाम् । समानं मन्त्रमभि मन्त्रये वः समानेन वो हविषा जुहोमि ॥ (10.191.3)

“Common be the prayer of these (assembled worshippers), common be the acquisition, common thepurpose, associated be the desire. I repeat for you a common prayer, I offer for you with a common oblation.”

स॒मा॒नी व॒ आकू॑तिः समा॒ना हृद॑यानि वः । स॒मा॒नम॑स्तु वो॒ मनो॒ यथा॑ व॒: सुस॒हास॑ति ॥
समानी व आकूतिः समाना हृदयानि वः । समानमस्तु वो मनो यथा वः सुसहासति ॥ (10.191.4)

“Common, (worshipppers), be your intention; common be (the wishes of) your hearts; common be yourthoughts, so that there may be thorough union among you.”

Saṃjñāna (संज्ञान) can be roughly translated to unanimity or concord.  But not intellectually forced.  It is predicated on an elevated level of consciousness that perceives reality the way it is.  In that perception, it was perceived, that unanimity would be the outcome.

Discord was not considered an intellectual chasm but a consciousness of disharmony.

The Vedic scholar Sayanacharya has also viewed it very similarly.

So this now leads us to how the Indian tradition has looked at equality and justice. These two concepts go hand in hand with democracy.

The concept of equality and justice has been ingrained in Rig Veda 5:60:5

अ॒ज्ये॒ष्ठासो॒ अक॑निष्ठास ए॒ते सं भ्रात॑रो वावृधु॒: सौभ॑गाय । युवा॑ पि॒ता स्वपा॑ रु॒द्र ए॑षां सु॒दुघा॒ पृश्नि॑: सु॒दिना॑ म॒रुद्भ्य॑: ॥

No one is superior (Ajyesthaaso) or inferior (Akanisthaasa). All are brothers (yete san bhrataaraha). All should strive for the interest of all and should progress collectively (sam bhraataro vaavrudhuh soubhagya)

समानि प्रपा सह वोSन्नभागः । समाने योक्त्रे सह वो युनजमि। सम्यंचोSगनिम् सपर्यतारा नाभिमिवाभित:। (Atharvaveda Samjnana Sutra ३-३०-६)

All have equal rights in articles of food and water. The yoke of the chariot of life is placed equally on the shoulders of all. All should live together with harmony supporting one another like the spokes of a wheel of teh chariot connecting its rim and the hub.

The translations of the verses above have been taken from the following document.

Now that we have learned of the history of Indian democratic thought, let us look at how modern democracy evolved in recent times in India.

Change in the Indian Democracy

Over the years, as we have discussed in earlier newsletters how over time, Congress has repressed the narratives that they did not like.

So when the commentators of today say that the "Freedom of Speech" is under threat what they are saying is that it's not just them who have the ability to speak but that others also have gotten the right to speak now.

The right to speak for others is the curtailment of their right to speak!

That is how fascist the Indian democratic way had been. The world since 2014 has changed.

When the platforms for sharing their mind were opened up to everyone, the carefully constructed heroes started falling apart.

That has created a new kind of Indian democracy. An open one. Which the West, which has wanted to control India, did not like.

It is now being allowed to be infused with the natural Dharmic underpinnings that were always prevalent in India.

Which Democracy?

There are different democracies in the world today. And in that the Indian democracy is the most unique. For, it has the gift of wisdom from many millennia of experiments in raising human consciousness. Indian democracy was not just about social structures but of spiritual energy and the transformation of mankind.

Balaji, a top tech thinker of today, shares the four distinct types of democracies in the world today. It is a thread that is very instructive to read.

Balaji says that Indian democracy may actually become the leading brand of democracy around the world.

Why is it so?

No other society is as diverse as India.

• Over 19,500 mother tongues are spoken in India.
• 121 languages are spoken by at least more than 10,000 people.
• India is home to eight major religions - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism
• All the denominations of Islam and Christianity thrive in India
• India has at least 31 identified cuisines which are distinct from each other
• As per latest publications dated May 2023 from Election Commission of India, and subsequent notifications, there are 6 national parties, 54 state parties, and 2,597 unrecognised parties

In such mind-numbing diversity, India holds its elections.

The registered voters in the last Indian election were 912 million.

It was by far the largest democratic election in human history!

That is the kind of democratic credentials that India has. Not just a history of ancient pioneering democratic wisdom but a polity that outstrips every other democratic exercise by many times.

The Western commentators and think-tanks - countries where democracy is on the brink of collapse - continue to pontificate on the state of Indian democracy just because their favorite guy has not won.

Look at the quick search on "India democracy"

Meanwhile, a majority of Indians feel their democracy is just fine.

Do you see how these Geopolitical games on Democracy play out?

When to you democracy is just a war tool as opposed to your fundamental mojo and creed, then there is no way you can have the right to advocate for that. You cannot be leading the narrative for that.

That is why, as Balaji said in his tweet, India needs to be the number one brand of Democracy around the world.

We need to set the benchmark and the narrative.

Video Corner: History of the Jews and Israel

What is the history of Jews and Israelis? This has been the bone of contention recently after the Hamas attacks. The media is full of a one-sided narrative. So, here is a take from two prominent Jews themselves.