The Downside of Democracy

It seems that many of the organisations working in urban communities to address the problems of racial intolerance, inequality and exclusion are having to cease operating due to cutbacks in funding. The government and local councils are telling them they have to ‘diversify’ into other areas of social concern. Apparently, racism is no longer a matter of sufficient gravity to warrant singular focus.

This is worrying for a number of reasons, not least because it appears to vindicate what I have long suspected: that the giving of public money to address racial issues is not driven by values such as compassion or a proper desire to ensure justice and equality for all. It is driven by the political need to minimise the consequences of marginalisation. Marginalised people tend to feel anger and the need for vengeance. That’s human nature. They become ugly; they threaten to rebel; they might even turn violent. Governments lose the support of their voter base when society appears to be disintegrating, and so it is politically expedient to be seen to be putting a lid on the pressure cooker.

Such expediency only lasts, of course, for as long as the perception holds that there is money available. But times have changed. We have been going through a recession. The same denizens of Middle England, to whom the major parties look for votes, might once have tolerated the spending of a few millions on the race issue if it meant they would be spared a latter day sacking of Rome by the ethnic minority Vandals. Now, in these difficult economic times, they are more likely to resent the spending of their hard earned taxes on people who they see as the troublesome inhabitants of an alien culture. Hence, the vote winner becomes the vote loser. It’s just one symptom of the callous and cynical nature of western democratic politics; and therein lies the deeper issue.

We are led to believe that democracy is the perfect political system because it ensures rule by the majority. Even allowing that such is really the case, the problem is that the will of the majority isn’t necessarily right. Lynch law mentality, for example, is one unfortunate manifestation of rule by the majority. In western, free market cultures, the majority is formed of the middle ground, which is self consciously comfortable, conformist and aspirational. Such aspirations are determined, I might add, by the will of the system, not the majority. It is also patently apparent that the middle ground is not as comfortable as its inhabitants are conditioned to believe, but that’s a separate issue.

The point I’m making is that democracy does not celebrate diversity. Democracy demands cloying conformity. There is a movement in Britain to ban the Muslim face veil, the reason being that they are considered ‘a symptom of a divided society.’ This is a sad state of affairs, because it panders to the hideous will of the racists under the guise of democratic justification. In a democracy, only the middle ground is truly acceptable; democracy demands unquestioning allegiance to its values, mores and expectations. Anyone who declines to do that becomes, to some extent at least, an outcast. Marginalisation is the inevitable consequence. The only way to avoid such stricture is to be rich. The rich are, for some unaccountable reason, always afforded a warm welcome, even when, like Donald Trump, they can destroy hundreds of acres of wild land, against the will of the local majority, to feed their self-serving interests. What price democracy then?

So is there a better system? That’s a matter of opinion; no political system is inherently perfect. What I want the west to do is to stop using the banner of democracy to cover a multitude of sins. If we want it, fine; but at least let us be aware that the political machine is driven as much by individual greed and power mania as it is by the values supposedly inherent in the concept of democracy. And when we go driving our military bulldozers around the world, supposedly spreading the gospel, the whole concept takes on a much darker hue. It becomes just another form of imperialism. If other people want a different system, that’s their choice.

And so we come full circle to the issue of diversity. Democracy does so love to destroy it.