Civilization, Democracy, America, and the Future

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I’ve been wondering what to say. About the election. That I haven’t already said so many times before.

Are these the last few days of American democracy? In a way, this is the question on everyone’s mind. Everyone I run into asks. Old friends call. Acquaintances get in touch. They don’t all put it like this. But if we distill what everyone really wants to know, that, my friends, is very much the question on the world’s mind.

If you read the newspapers and magazines in these last few hours before the crucial decision, the mood is fevered. The question, again, isn’t quite asked outright. But it’s very much what they want to ask, intend to, what all this thinking and wondering and panic means.

So…

Are These the Last Days of American Democracy?

I read a post at the Atlantic today. It was by McKay Coppins. He said something like: democracy is something that lives in people, and so if people want democracy, it will always endure.

Alas, as much I as like the sentiment, it’s not how history works. Rest assured that throughout history, people wanted to be free, and yet long millennia of it are made of empire, slavery, conquest, caste, and feudalism.

People merely wanting a democracy, in the end, matters too little, less than we think, and far less than it should.

I say that because in America, there’s still not a very sophisticated understanding of what authoritarianism is. It’s not a system people want. Rather, the entire structure and purpose of it is that people don’t want it, not the majority, not really ever. Hence, the authoritarian part is that people must be coerced and intimidated and punished and brutalized.

So even now, in America, in these twilight hours, I feel that there’s still very much being missed, not understood, left unsaid.

In Coppins’ way of thinking, which is the way that American liberals and anti-Trump conservatives imagine it, democracy lives in people, and therefore, if the people “choose” it, then democracy prevails. But like I said: this isn’t what authoritarianism is, nor is it what history’s made of.

So to really answer the question, we need to go much, much deeper.

The Age of Zombie Democracy

What’s happening in this world of ours? One of the macro trends I try to teach you about is democratic implosion. And I use the word implosion, not “backsliding,” deliberately, not just provocatively, but descriptively. We are seeing rates of decline of 10% a decade.

And yet that doesn’t teach you all that you need to know.

If democracy’s imploding globally, what is it that’s replacing it? It’s not a world of Gaddafis and Saddams, really.

Democracy is imploding into something else. Something different from the classical, now almost antiquated form, of hard dictatorship level autocracy.

Look at, for example, nations in South and Central America, which are dysfunctional, not for a lack of trying, but more of resources. There, gangs run districts and towns and so forth. Not quite democracy, not exactly dictator level autocracy.

That’s sort of a bad example, because that’s not what I’m saying America becomes. I’m just sort of opening your eyes to the ways in which political forms are in rapid and severe transformation.

What makes this age different is that we’re seeing democracies implode into what I’ve come to call zombie democracies.

Why Zombie Democracies Emerge

You can think of plenty of examples, like, of course, Russia, or even China, which, yes, holds kinds of elections.

These are nations that pretend to be democracies, even though we all know they’re not.

So why do they do that? What’s with the pretense? It’s a little weird and a little funny when you think about it. Why pretend to be a democracy, when the charade is so easily seen through? When it becomes absurd?

There’s an answer to that question, in fact. Pretending to be a democracy has become more and more crucial in this world of ours, and so the days of outright dictatorship level autocracy have waned. Yet even so, democracy’s in steep decline. And instead, we see zombie democracies.

Zombie democracies emerge because the pretense of democracy, at least, carries with it certain rewards. A nation can still have access, for example, to various kind of capital markets. It can enjoy membership in various kind of international organizations and fora. It can deal with institutions and be perceived to be less risky—think, for example, of McDonald’s entering zombie democracies, versus hard dictatorship level autocracies.

In other words, pretending to be a democracy carries with it some thin veneer of legitimacy. Hey, it says, we’re not that bad. As those guys, over there—of whom few, if we think about it, are left, the true dictatorship level autocracies, like North Korea, and a handful of others. You can do deals with us. We have diplomats and departments. You can do business with us.

For all these reasons, zombie democracies are replacing outright dictatorial autocracies. But they’re also beginning to replace what used to be “full” democracies. Take Britain, for example, the laughingstock of the developed world. Ruinously, fatally, it chose Brexit—but even though today the vast majority of the country regrets it, the decisions can’t be undone. This is as literal as zombie democracy gets.

It means something like: a thing that looks like a democracy, that sort of acts like a democracy, but isn’t a democracy at all, and is hell-bent, usually, on eating all the democracies around it, devouring what it can of them, for no other reason than rage, hate, despair, or senselessly, because it’s what zombies do.

Will America Become a Zombie Democracy?

This is what America risks becoming.

Trump isn’t going to anoint himself Lord Emperor. Yet, anyways. He’s just going to be…President. But not really in a democratic way. In an autocratic one.

And more to the point, this brings us to the crux of the issue. What is a democracy? How is it that zombie democracies are emerging because people are choosing them?

In our age, the meaning of democracy is being forgotten, or worse, “disputed,” by numerous kinds of bad faith actors. Those on its side do a poor job of defending it, like America’s institutions over the last decade, allowing thin definitions of democracy to compete with room in discourse and minds with the real thing.

A democracy is very simple, and I need to remind you, because that is what all this is really about, this paradox of becoming less democratic to the point of becoming a zombie through the very act of voting.

Democracy is not just “the majority chooses.” In no sense is it that. That is just majoritarianism, and it doesn’t require democracy at all. Democracy, the “rule of the people,” is about rights. Inalienable rights, as America’s Founding Fathers wisely understood. Those rights are what the government exists to guarantee, administer, and expand. We vote for a government precisely to do that, to conduct that mission, to carry out that task.

Understood that way, properly, democracy is not a system in which I take away your rights. Or, worse, give a dictator masquerading as a President or Prime Minister the power to, and I say that’s worse because of course, that masks what’s really going on.

Democracy is first and foremost, if it’s anything at all, a system in which we consent to one anothers’ basic rights. What we contest is who administers them, for how long, in what way, with what budget, and so on. But what we don’t contest is whether you or I have them.

Now, that’s idealistic. Of course democracy’s been a project in which rights have been contested and fought over and won. But this is better called something like “meta-democracy.” When I say, I should have these rights, I should exist, and you say, no, you aren’t a human being, and eventually, one of us wins.

That’s something above democracy, if we’re accurate about it.

I say that for a reason, not just theoretically or philosophically.

Zombie Democracies Exist to Devour (People)

Why do zombie democracies exist? I’ve given you one reason, which is legitimacy, but that’s not enough of one, really—if that was all we wanted, we’d just be, well, real democracies.

Zombie democracies exist to perpetually devour people.

The point of a zombie democracy is that instead of doing anything positive or constructive—building new hospitals or schools, educating the young, taking care of the elderly, planning for the future—we are devouring each other.

There’s a perpetual battle over who shouldn’t get to exist. But not in a positive sense. This group shouldn’t, they shouldn’t, those people shouldn’t, because they’re not really people at all. Over what rights shouldn’t exist. Those people aren’t really humans, so they shouldn’t have basic freedoms.

This is all a zombie democracy does.

But, again, why?

Because zombie democracies emerge as byproducts of stagnation and decline.

As economies stagnate and decline, there’s less to go around. As predatory elites pick off the loot, there’s even less of that lack to go around.

And so people must turn on each other.

This is how healthy political form and order becomes the stuff of zombie democracy—a perpetual battle over who shouldn’t exist, which rights shouldn’t exist, which freedoms aren’t to be allowed. That tells us something, too, which is that a certain threshold is crossed, and after that, zombie democracy feeds on itself. It’s a vicious cycle, in other words, which is very, very hard to break.

If what we’re doing isn’t planning for the future, investing, building, creating, nurturing, thinking, lifting, all that heavy, hard, intense work—but instead, turning on each other, and battling over who shouldn’t exist, what freedoms aren’t to be allowed, who’s not really a person at all—then of course our society will do nothing but stagnate and decline harder and faster.

Take a look at Russia—it’s hardly become a rich and prosperous nation this way. Take a look at China—it couldn’t even get to becoming a society with a middle class this way. The examples are endless.

And they warn us of the danger, which is that there is a turning point here. Once a nation decides to become a zombie democracy, it’s very, very hard to choose any other road. Brexit was forever, as Britain’s folly reminds us. How far in the future is a democratic…pick your current zombie nation. Doesn’t matter. The point is to understand the dynamics.

Devouring each other instead of planting seeds for the future is a poor road for a society to choose. We know where it ends.

I don’t have to remind you. Rome does, the 1930s do, all of history, littered with the ruins of lost civilizations, teaches us that much.

But it’s up to us to learn that lesson.

Kamala’s having a good final stretch. She may yet win.

But America needs to learn this lesson, and make this choice, which is larger, deeper, harder, and truer, in every way that matters.

That is what’s really at stake. For America, for the world, for civilization. Not just over the next few days, but in these years, in this age.

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