What’s harming Western democracy

An inexplicable fear has gripped the interlocutors of democratic project around the world. The fear of the collapse of democracy. It seems that the world is still reeling from the black swan victory of Donald Trump and what it entails for the civilisation. As every cherished democratic norm melts down in front of our very eyes and the wild, even surreal, cacophony of violent protests on your television or smartphone screens obliterate the chances of a serious group rethink, the world inadvertently braces for the worst.

And the Western publishing houses are churning out book after book on the subject. Some like Madeleine Albright’s Fascism: A Warning and Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels turn to past for explanation, lessons and means to divine the future. Others like David Corn and Michael Isikoff’s Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump look elsewhere for understanding.

The subject or at least the prime motivator of all these books is the stunning 2016 win of Trump and what it means for America, the West, democracy and the world. Former director CIA Michael Hayden’s The Assault on Intelligence goes a bit further and like many other works shines the light on how it negatively affects America’s national security and interest. However, these remarkable works often fail to answer one crucial question: Whether Trump’s victory is a cause or merely an effect of the situation we find ourselves in. While his peculiar personality and the reaction to it complicate matters further, his meteoric rise owes itself to the circumstances and double standards that were not of his making.

But before that let me underscore the fact that in nascent democracies where freethinkers are barely learning to walk, this came as a paralysing blow to their spines. And in its aftermath they find it difficult to sell the idea that the product (democracy) in itself is not flawed. That is why you witness a quiet movement towards re-authoritarianism disguised under the wafer-thin apparel of nominal democracy in many places. When the teacher has a problem, students usually get away with anything.

Now back to what is happening in the West and what caused the friction and old fault lines to explode there. This friction existed before Trump even decided to run for the public office. He simply saw an opportunity and seized it.

So what caused it. I know we can partially if not completely blame the Fox News and radio talk phenomena for it. These tools were honed to defend the Bush administration. And when Obama came they became the vanguard of resistance against him using every dirty trick in the book. They used race card, religion, paranoia and deceit to their advantage. But that is only the domain of perceptions. Perceptions cannot do too much damage in absence of genuine pain. The celebrated movie Big Short does justice to the question of how corruption during Bush administration’s time led to economic slowdown. Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land tells us about the effects of Obama administration. But even that is not enough.

There is more. Democracy’s strength lies in its principles. Democracy challenges monopolies of thought. Absolutism is its kryptonite. It also fights concentration of power. It is loath to censorship and spin. And yet we see all of these maladies afflicting the teacher.

As GL Williams in the essay ‘The Life of JS Mill and Perspectives on his thoughts’ (John Stuart Mill: Critical Assessments, Volume 1 edited by John Cunningham Wood), writes: “We do not decide problems in a vacuum of principles as we do not decide them in a vacuum of experience.” But behold the vacuums of principles infesting the Western nations, especially America.

How many school shootings have you seen recently? One of them killed our own Sabika Sheikh and left a faith shaped hole in the hearts of fathers like me who wanted their daughters to one day study there. But what is the reaction? Partial outrage. Some marches and more promises. Meanwhile, the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) manages to dub those who advocate gun regulation traitors and enemies of the second amendment. While the sensitivity of gun owners and 2^nd amendment folk is understandable in many cases, how does society let NRA behave as if it is above the law? No financial disclosures, no accountability.

Another example. The recent Israeli massacre of 60 Palestinians in Gaza in broad daylight, in front of live television camera and with mind numbing impunity. Given its history, one can understand the US position on Israel’s right to defend itself in case of terrorism. But this wasn’t terrorism. You cannot call the right to assembly an act of terrorism. The ensuing split screen bloodbath was a tutorial to many autocrats elsewhere. Yet the US response was remarkable. Nikki Haley, the US ‘sheriff in town’ at the UN, stormed out in protest as soon the Palestinian envoy started speaking. You think your people can reconcile with these glaring double standards. Only a few days ago following the murder of a Palestinian journalist and a 15-year-old, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman had proclaimed that there were no one innocent in Gaza. Apparently not even newborns. You realise this is not a counterterrorism approach. It is called racism 101.

And to think that it all happened because the US decided to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Even if it is accepted as a bilateral issue, despite the presence of countless UN resolutions, you have to look at the motives. The lineup of speakers at the ceremony to mark the occasion revealed it wasn’t done in love of the Jewish people. So, the purpose was to help out an embattled prime minister facing corruption charges and to placate a domestic evangelical community that thinks such a move is critical for the world to end. What an admirable and noble motive to make such a huge policy decision.

Trump gets one thing right though. America’s allies have also mercilessly taken advantage of the country. Another blind spot is India whose prime minister was banned from entering the country until he rose to post. Amazingly the very media that constantly attacks Trump does not utter a word about what Modi’s party is doing in Occupied Kashmir or to minorities in India.

These blind spots, vacuums of principles and double standards are killing democracy. If you want to save democracy you have to do away with them. Hold other countries to high ethical standards. But hold yourself and your allies to even higher moral standards. These bad precedents that we create today will one day come back to haunt us especially as we enter the age of extreme inequality, eugenics and artificial intelligence.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2018.

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