Democracy: The ideal of equal say for everyone

While we appear to be moving towards more democracy, what has been attained to date can only be described as disappointing. The so-called democratic nations of the world predominantly involve representative democracy with voting citizens having to rely on and trust elected members. While these democracies are generally accepted as being better than those with non-democratic forms of government people are fed up with broken promises, lies and corruption. For this reason, most of the people who live in democracies are deeply unhappy with their politicians and workings of their political systems.

There is also a great deal of pretense about our democratic systems. For example, in the mainstream media of the so-called democratic nations of the world, USA is held up as a great democracy, yet the USA is not really a democracy. The US government is technically a polyarchy masquerading as a democracy. While it is true that every four years an election is held where most people are eligible to vote for any candidate they like, their choice is rather limited. Elections are dominated by two main political parties that both represent major US business interests. The elections are contested on issues that have relevance to big business rather than to the average person. The mainstream media, which are themselves large business enterprises, are financed by other big businesses and tend to focus on the contest between the two main parties giving virtually no time to other candidates and parties. The sorry state of affairs is reflected by extremely low voter turnout. One of the two main parties always wins while the other finishes second, one election after the other. The elected government makes decisions that don’t reflect popular opinion and are highly in-line with big business interests.

Similar conjuring tricks designed to keep the very wealthy in control are more or less in play within in all the current democracies of the world.

There are many issues facing the people of the world today. Climate change, gay marriage rights and mass surveillance are three issues that are currently very important to the public. If we had a truly democratic system much more would be being done to curb the effects of climate change, gay marriage would be legally recognised and mass surveillance would be stopped. There are countless other issues that could also be dealt with by more democratic systems of government.

Publicising these issues involves a great deal of energy on the part of many committed people in the hope that gaining media attention will help sway the government to act appropriately but governments generally don’t react or are slow to react, especially if big business interests are likely to be adversely affected. If they do act, they usually don’t go far enough or bring in legislation that provides ways for big businesses to continue in much the same way as before. There are lots of different movements populated by committed individuals hoping to draw the media's attention. This separation of efforts has the affect of divide and conquer. It would undoubtedly be more productive if all these committed individuals could combine forces and work together to achieve democracy. Democracy has the potential to settle a great many issues. Democracy is the super issue and we need to treat it as such.

Democracy is an ideal. Though it doesn't exist in reality, there are features of democracy within many political systems around the world.