With the anniversary of the January 6 fiasco, there's been a near continuous yammer-fest in the liberal press about how the end of "democracy" may be approaching. Examples are Jimmy Carter and the The NYT Editorial Board.
The liberals are right to be concerned -- it's quite clear that nearly half of the voting public would prefer a narcissistic lunatic to a "liberal." And it's also clear that a large percentage of that near-half think that Donald Trump -- the narcissistic lunatic in question -- is actually somehow good for America.
This should not really surprise us. Deep down, most people believe, and have believed since the time of Plato, that the best kind of government would be a benevolent dictatorship. The problem is just that liberals would like a benevolent dictator with liberal views and conservatives would like a conservative one. Trump supporters are people who have figured out that normal politics have let them down, and would like a leader like Trump.
As I think I've made clear before, Alt-QAnon teaches us that both political parties are WRAITHS and both are under control of more wraiths -- mainly corporations but also organized religion (even Obama had to pretend to be religious to get elected) and entities like QAnon. Just because a wraith has its own form of intelligence doesn't mean it can't be essentially controlled by another wraith or even a human being. The CEO of a company might control the company, just as the leader of a religion might steer the religion in one direction or another. But in most cases, the wraith outlives the human leader, just as in all likelihood the Republican Party and QAnon will outlive Donald Trump.
In other words, it's been a while since we've actually had a "democracy" here, in the sense of rule by the people. So the people who are suddenly concerned that democracy might be under threat are missing the point.
Right now, we're seeing the Democratic Party wraith do what wraiths do best -- attempt to take advantage of a situation to increase their power.
Here, the situation was the narcissistic former President's refusal to acknowledge that he had lost the election, and his ability to somehow, despite a lack of rudimentary speaking ability -- stir up a resentful, rag-tag mob that then shambled toward the Capitol, probably with no particular aim in mind.
At some point, the wraith underlying the mob -- the separate intelligence that everyone agrees mobs have (see, e.g., James Madison: "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”) -- took over, perhaps when the mob realized that it would actually be possible to get to break through the thin line of Capitol Police and get into the Capitol itself. At that point, the members of the mob were simply pawns of the mob itself, swept into the Capitol by the mob's separate volition. Sure, some of them were both willing and thrilled to breach the Capitol; it just seems unlikely that even the majority of them had that intent after hearing Trump's speech. But when the mob as a whole -- the wraith -- figured out that it could get in, the foot soldiers simply followed, some giddily and others blindly.
None of this excuses Trump for spreading lies about the election and giving the mob its start.
But no matter how the January 6th attack had played out -- even if it had lasted longer, caused more damage, and taken more lives -- it was never a threat to our "democracy-by-wraith." Biden would still be President today. That's because our founders thought about this sort of thing, and set up systems to ensure that a takeover would not occur. Many believed that George Washington should be made King, because everyone knew he would always act in the country's best interest. But cooler heads prevailed, and realized that if too much power is concentrated in one office, eventually that office will fall into the hands of the wrong sort of person -- someone who either does not have the nation's best interest at heart, or has a warped and anti-democratic view of the nation's best interest. So we have checks and balances that ensure that too much power doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Trump could not have undone the election.
My point is that the Democrats are using this event for political gain, and the individuals writing about it are not really trying to learn from it.
There are two lessons they should be learning:
First, it is possible, even in this day and age, for a demagogue to stir up a mob and incite the mob to violence. That means that any time you have a demagogue addressing a group of supporters that might turn violent, you need to take precautions, especially if the violence might be carried out against an institution of government. In this regard, perhaps our democracy should take a page from our own sorry past, or else look to see how other countries put down protests that get out of hand. Firehoses and tear gas. Problem solved, for next time.
Second, we should be taking steps to reclaim the democracy that we've already given away. The simplest way to do this is to become politically active, and embrace and spread the principles of Alt-QAnon, and either run for political office or vote only for candidates who recognize the problem and are committed to doing something about it. The same people who were so easily "converted" by the lies of QAnon should be all the more convertible by Alt-QAnon, which is the truth.
Go for it.
