“Democracy”

Lately, every time someone writes about “democracy” in some piece of urgent online hand-wringing, I stop reading. It’s not because I disagree with their politics, necessarily, but because I can’t shake the uncanny feeling that the writer has stopped thinking.

“Democracy” is exactly what we are living with. Rule by populists and demagogues is one of its outcomes. What these people seem to want is something else, a Utopia of Rules, in which the adults swoop in to save us from our mistakes. It’s the world of Report Cards and Crossing Guards, where the rules and consequences are written on the board. That’s not the world we’re living in.