Democracy Study Guide v1

I see a Democracy in some ways like a great Ship sailing the seas of Time, with periods of calm and periods of strife which test the strength of the vessel and determination of those who man her. Like the ship, we need 3 primary things to come together, or be brought together, to work well together, to make a great structure that will sail on maybe not quite invincible but very strongly through the storms and the attacks and the ages - good, strong materials to build a great strong enduring vessel, a good plan, and good builders. Poor materials or planning or poor execution of a good plan, any of these can sink a great ship or cause a democracy to fail. Consider the mighty Titanic - best materials available, built by the best workmen, considered invincible, but the plan was lacking, they failed to plan for a flooding event of a certain height, and built the bulkheads too short (among other planning problems), and when put to the severest test on its first outing it failed with harsh punishment - it all went to the bottom of the sea. Where western 'democracy' is headed if we don't very soon make a major revision to how we are allowing our countries to be run.

For a good Democracy that will last through time and get better and better as our descendants nurture and grow it, and be able to stand off the attacks of those human predatory types who will always be with us and always wish to be Emperors and Kings and ready to move in again if we grow careless and lazy and stupid and take our 'democracy' for granted (as has been happening the last 50 years), we need the same - analagously, we need good, strong intelligent, motivated, hard-working people who want to create a strong democracy and are willing and even eager to do the necessary work to create this dream, we need a very solid plan for how our Democracy will function and remain strong through the ages, and we need to build that Democracy on solid ground by first deposing the oligarchy that has ruled us all more or less forever and continues to have great influence on what happens to us from behind the scenes, to the point where the very notion of 'democracy' in our modern world, once at least a strong dream with steady progress towards making it a reality, has deteriorated until in the 21st century it has become nothing more than empty words, a hollow shell with no substance.

As humans we have done a lot of very incredible things, huge ships and jetliners navigating the globe, great rockets to get humans off of this planet, endless wonderful scientific discoveries put to practical use with modern amazing technologies to make our lives easier and more fulfilling - but we have not had a lot of success in building strong, true democracies - there have been many noble efforts to be sure, with varying degress of success for varying periods of time, but which in all but a very few small cases have always been ultimately (or in reality from the very beginning) ruled by strong people with a stronger will to power than 'we the people' have been able to resist with a stronger will to self-rule. But these people with a strong will to rule are also very destructive in their ambition, and with the great power of modern science and technology are on the verge of destroying this wonderful world nature has provided and we now have the technologies to modify into a potentially could-be-almost paradise on earth - IF 'we the democratic sane people' can manage to wrest power from the exploiter-berserker-capitalists-neo-feudalists. So it is time, well past time really, to see if we more-human humans can push these insane human predators and out-of-control berserkers back, and create a true democracy, or at least the beginnings of a true democracy with the potential for continual improvement of all of our lives, in which the more peaceful wishes of the majority of us prevail over the insane drive to power of those who rule.

So - what things do we need to assemble to create or at least birth this great new true democracy?

Dem Building Block 1 - We the People - the first essential component of a strong democracy - a strong, informed, engaged people who understand if they want a strong democracy, then **they** have to create it and look after it - democracy is not a 'gift' from someone somewhere, it is a living organic thing that is as strong - or weak - as the people who create and inhabit and look after it -

Who??? Far and away, most importantly - the People. A Democracy is government of, by and for the people - so the first question to sort out is the most fundamental one, the one on which all the others rest, determining whether we succeed or fail - who are these people?? What kind of people do we need in our communities to create and maintain a strong, truly 'grass-roots-up' democracy, well-designed and managed to last and grow better and stronger through the ages? Who has a true 'democratic mind and heart' to share in conceiving and building and then fighting against all wouldbe usurpers to create and maintain a true democracy, in the face of the obvious real and fierce opposition of those who would be kings with no 'democratic' impediments to their omnipotent rule, who indeed at this tipping point in time are fighting mightily to create an impregnable oligarchy in which any attempt at resisting the rulers and creating a true democracy will be quickly detected and violently with prejudice be smashed to the ground (that's not any kind of hyperbole, it's what the neofeudalist rulers of the US have been doing for over 200 years at home and all around the world, more in a later chapter)? Wouldbe omnipotent rulers for whom the very last thing they want is an informed and engaged and courageous citizenry - far far better for those would be kings is a herd of passive, uninformed, unquestioning and obedient citizens, such as they have been actively creating over the last 50 years.

It seems evident that the great majority of the citizens inhabiting our current English-speaking countries (all I can really assume to speak of, not speaking any other relevant languages so unable to follow 'news' or alt-sites in those countries) ('pretend-democracies' at best) do not have the 'democratic mind or spirit', most seem rather to have the 'sheep mind' (easily herdable, generally passive, obedient, trusting, without much 'fighting-evil spirit' at all) - they have passively allowed the 'freedoms' and 'rights' our ancestors fought and sacrificed greatly for over generations and centuries to be slowly but surely dimished and constrained and caged over the last 60 or so years until now 'freedom' is pretty much an empty shell, a hollow saying, a dead thing walking, with most citizens fully brainwashed/indoctrinated/pacified/dumbed-down to show little or no resistance to the current rulers' notion that 'freedom' basically means you trust and obey your 'democratically-elected leaders' implicitly, and within that framework you're free to color inside the lines and otherwise do as you're told by the 'authorities' you 'elect' every now and then or face the consequences, which to me does not equate even remotely with a political system called 'democracy' and the democratic powers and freedoms (including 'freedoms from') inherent in that word.

(little aside - I agree with the democratic notion some may raise that there is a balance to maintain - a democracy can sometimes have leaders who do unpopular things, and the correct response is not to immediately cry 'revolution!!!' but wait for the system to self-correct, which a strong and vibrant democracy will do, following the realisation of problems occurring by the strong and vibrant democratic citizenry and their corrective actions. But I don't agree we are in such a time now. Now - and for at least the last 40 years - we have been clearly undergoing a completely intentional, uncorrectable (because there is no intention to try to correct it, the increasing authoritarianism is a feature not a bug - Everything getting worse in Canada) with our current parties and leaders, attempt to put our wouldbe democracy, our once-almost democracy, in chains, to openly usurp power from the people, and create an open police state in which the government rules absolutely, and the people are deprived of all real power. This is clearly a system which will not 'self-correct', this is clearly a system from which, in reality, has been completely removed all self-correct possibilities, and is clearly in the process of making any attempt at any 'corrections' impossible to achieve. And we have to make the decision of the old saying - Lord let me accept what I must, fight to change what I can - and the wisdom to know the difference. The time for passive acceptance, trusting or hoping things will self-correct, is long behind us - we accept the ever-tightening chains of the new rulers, or we turn our fucking brains and hearts back on and get up off our fucking 'yes master' faces and fight for our and our childrens' freedom. We have been on the proverbial slippery slope for decades now, and we are very close to going over the edge to a place we really do not want to be, and with no way back - you can't unhit the iceberg, you can't undo the short period of stupid drunk driving that terribly wound up with dead people that will be with you forever, you can't easily throw off the chains and undo the years of passivity that enabled the oligarchy to put their chains around you.)

In a true, viable 'democracy', there needs to be a solid critical mass of people who are strong and intelligent and courageous, independent and engaged, people with a pretty well developed 'critical thinking' capacity to smell out and call out the liars and grifters and wouldbe-omnipotent-rulers before they get started (I guess that's pretty clearly not an option any more having passed us well by, but the strength and courage to fight them is not completely removed from our citizens yet, thank whoever you thank for such courage and that we have this base to work with), and who are very disinclined to unquestioningly obey orders based on 'laws' with no actual democratic approval from people running around claiming authority and their grifter 'experts' and media. People who care greatly about Democracy and Freedom, who are always alert for developing problems in their community and protecting it from the 'some pigs are more equal than others' types always lurking around always ready and clandenstinely trying to usurp power for their own benefit.

Engaged people who want to live in a real democracy understand that nobody is going to give it to them (I am not sure if there are many of this kind of people around today, nobody talks about this, most people seem to have the idea that wise and benevolent capitalist leaders will take care of their 'democracy' for them while they wander around with their faces in their hive phones living utterly narcissistic meaningless lives, and that is surely one of the stupidest ideas they have so many people believing that we need to combat), that it is up to them to first make it, to outwork those who want more of an oligarchical society, and then look after it every day, be aware of the major things going on in the country, and be ready to take quick action when something looks wrong. People wise enough to understand that a democratic community or country should not be a 'winner-take-all' competition between two or more sides, each divided into further sub-sides making effective cooperative decision making or action pretty much impossible (the ages old ruler strategy of divide the peasants in as many ways as possible so they are endlessly haggling among themselves and not getting together to fight the real enemy, their Kings, honed to a very high level of effectiveness in recent years, dumbed-down citizens being much more susceptible to such tactics), but more like a large, diverse family, a place where intelligent people work out appropriate compromises to whatever issues might arise, where we all work together to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number, who understand that 'we the people' do have one great enemy, which is not to be found among our neighbors and friends, but who live in the great penthouses high above us, the people who have great fortunes which they use to corrupt our system from behind the scenes and have them enact policies for their power and wealth and our endless financial insecurity and powerlessness.

This whole 'two sides' thing, Libs-Cons, Repubs-Dems, men-women, one skin color or religion against the others, my country against your country, etc etc etc, is a reflection of feudal days, when there were clearly 2 sides - the rulers and the ruled, which was the origin of the pretend-democracies back in the 1700s when the great majority of 'ruled' got together and made it clear they were not going to be treated like animals any longer by the very much smaller group of 'rulers', for which to deal with the rulers devised the system where the peasants could vote for 'representatives' in a parliament or congress, which would then be the 'legal democratic' authority, and ensured that the rulers - the wealthy people - would always control the lion's share of the representatives or candidates and thus maintain their rule, with a few flashy bells and whistles and different slogans and 'party colors' loudly sold as showing Democracy!!!, slowly morphing into a more refined system where the people were convinced that dividing themselves into two opposing groups fighting among themselves, rather than the average people fighting those who would be their rulers, was 'democracy', and with endless reinforcement about how great!!!!!!!!!!!! it is!!!!!!!!!!! from the ruler-controlled media. It worked well for them for a couple of hundred years, but as noted above, when 'the people' started getting too rambunctious with 'their democracy' after WWII (a longer story), they decided things had gone too far and needed to be rolled back to something closer to the original feudal model, which they have very nearly accomplished - it's quite clear that in our current incarnations of 'democracies', we have a situation where our governments have assumed the role of 'the adults' in the room, and we citizens pacified to the level of 'the children', to be guided around as 'the adults' wish, something like a high-school with pretend 'meaningful elections' etc, but with no actual authority over anything important - which is not what a 'democracy' 'of, by and for the people' is actually supposed to be about. (this is all explained in much greater detail in one of my earlier essays, here - It's not 'the left' trying to take over the world and shut down free speech and all that other bad stuff - it's 'the right'!! )

The true 'democratic citizen' must be educated, must have a solid understanding of his or her world, current events, basic science, arts and culture, and above all history - real history, not the 'Americans and capitalism wonderful everyone else fucking commie monsters' version being taught today and for many years in the past - as the saying goes, he who does not understand history is bound to repeat it. We cannot build a better future if we do not understand the many lies of the past our current situation is built on, about which more anon. (nor of course, to state what should be obvious, does the intelligent democratic citizen bow to the current 'gods of wokeness' who have somewhat mysteriously taken over so much of western English society lately, one of the most destructive forces we have ever seen, a testament to the great power of the rulers propaganada/indoctrination machine)

In a true democracy, the 'democratic citizenry' - intelligent, informed, engaged citizens - should be working together for the betterment of *our* society, through open, informed, thorough debate of any contentious issues, and working towards a compromise accepted by most (you're rarely going to get all, but we can't allow some small percent of the population, extremists on either side of the political spectrum, to roadblock the clear desire of a strong majority after full debate of whatever issue, there's always going to be a handful of people on the extremes contrary to everything, and of course what is in the best interests of 'we the people' is going to be very much contrary to the 'interests' of those who would be our kings - that subgroup is just going to have to live with it, or go somewhere where their desired dog-eat-dog capitalism still rules. More anon)

So - for me, it seems our primary preliminary goal right now has to be creating, or awakening, this 'critical mass' group of strong, intelligent, freedom-loving-and-willing-to-fight-for-it true 'democratic citizens' who understand that nobody is going to gift them a nice democracy and even look after it for them, if we are going to ever have a true 'of, by and for the people' democracy, it's going to be because **we** make it happen, and **we the people** have to look after it like we look after the other most cherished and important things in our lives, such as our families and our homes and our communities. It's going to take some work and time, but we're never going to have a true Democracy without this strong, able, engaged and cohesive center to stand tall against those who would be our omnipotent rulers. I'll look a bit more at more detail of how we work towards creating this critical mass anon, but first. the next critical 'building block' of a strong democracy.

- or go where you like -

What it's about, By Way of Intro: A curious question, 1. Basic Democratic Building Blocks 1 - the Democratic Citizen, 2. Basic Democratic Building Blocks 2 - the Democratic Framework, 3. Creating or Awakening the Democratic Citizen, 4. The Ways of Power, 5. And in the end ...., A1. Basic Democratic Process, A2. Basic Democratic Economy, A3a. Big Lies 1 - Democracy, Media, Money, A3b. Big Lies 2 - Wonderful Capitalists!! EVIL!!!! Commies!!, A3c. Big Lies 3 - Pure evil indeed - but who???, A3d. One lie to rule them all, one lie to bind them

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