by Demosophist

I just watched a fascinating account on LinkTV's and Pacifica's leftist news program, Democracy NOW! concerning reports from sources in Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. One was from a London Guardian reporter in Kiev named Ian Traynor. (Here's a link to a story he wrote on the topic.) He has been close to the pro-democracy movement there, unlike many of his colleagues sitting at their desks in London, and maintains unequivocally that you can credit the US with launching and funding many of the citizen movements in that part of the world that were able to prevent autocrats from stealing elections. He also says that the movements are not oriented toward simply producing pro-American propaganda that favors a particular candidate, but rather their mission is to produce a level playing field. (For instance, the pro-authoritarian election in Belarus recently was allowed to stand without protest, largely because it was acknowledged that the anti-US candidate did, in fact, win.) more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 12:13 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 906 words, total size 6 kb.

by Demosophist

Well, I realize that the Democrats' recent reflections concerning secession are rather whimsical (as is Ryan Sager's contention that it's a step in the right direction). But lest anyone take this proposal remotely seriously I'd like to point out that had the Democrats won a previous election many consider directly analogous to 2004, the election of 1864, the country probably would have split (or rather remained split). The South would have indulged slavery for a few decades longer, and might even have entered WWI on the side of Germany. It's also the case that by 1896 the same sophisticate vs. rube geographic political divide existed in roughly the same pattern as the 2004 red/blue divide, except that it was the Republicans who were the sophisticates and the Democrats who appealed to populism and traditional "aw shucks" values. There have always been times when the sosphisticated observations of the blue people have restrained the excess naivete of the red people, just as there are times when the good sense of the red people have kept the blue people from servile liquifaction in their excessive esteem for things Continental. But realistically, although as a culture we owe a great deal to Bodine and Montesque, we owe hardly a thing to Rousseau. more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 12:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 790 words, total size 5 kb.

by Demosophist

You know, I was mentally and emotionally prepared to lose this election, because in spite of the fact that I don't like Kerry very much I don't actually believe he's the incarnation of evil. Most of the people in the pro-war camp discussed this quite a bit, and although not everyone went along most of us did. Jeff Jarvis, at BuzzMachine, is probably a crossover figure, who happened to have voted for Kerry. There were even a few in the pro-war camp who did so as well. There really is a stigma that attaches to sore losers and that works against them in subsequent elections, and at the extreme threatens the peaceful transition of power at the heart of democracy. Indulging outrageous conspiracy theories is part of being a sore loser, that seductively leads to worse. There's a name for it: Political Paranoia. (I highly recommend this scholarly book, though the persons who probably most need to read it, never will.) more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 10:34 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 531 words, total size 4 kb.