Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Aug 2010
- Posts
- 3,029
https://inthelastfiveyears.wordpress.com/2016/06/26/i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means/
I think maybe it’s time to have a little word about democracy.
I appreciate that feelings are running high but I think some people are perhaps waving the wrong end of a very splintery stick about what democracy means. So let’s start by sorting out what it DOESN’T mean.
Democracy isn’t a bloody game of Monopoly. It isn’t like a bloody football match. It’s not about winners and losers. If your team lost their match then that’s tough I understand, but it doesn’t result in years, even decades of financial uncertainty, and reductions in freedoms, for millions of people. Lost jobs and lost opportunities.
What happened to the markets on Friday is just the start. The democratic right you just exercised will have dire economic consequences for all those people and it is not about feeling a bit gloomy for a few days.
Democracy is not consequence-free.
Democracy is where decisions are taken by officials who are elected by the people, who are held accountable by the people, who step up and understand the complexities that the rest of us cannot have sight of. And then we can ditch them if they mess up.
That’s not what happened.
This decision was taken by people who were told to IGNORE experts. And the people who lied and lied and lied to persuade people to make this decision – who will hold them accountable for those lies? In a democratic situation, someone would face the consequences.
Democracy does not mean that you have no responsibility for your decisions. If you pressed the red button even though there were lots of big signs all around saying ‘DO NOT PRESS THE RED BUTTON OR BAD STUFF WILL HAPPEN!’ – well then you have the democratic right to press the button.
But I do not have to respect your democratic choice to press the button. I can think that you were wrong to press it, and all the bad consequences that stem from that for me and my country and my children – I can say that I do not want to pay the price for your reckless button pressing. It’s not just your own head you stuck in the microwave oven all wrapped in foil and made it explode. It was lots of things I liked a lot before you made splatter all over the walls of the kitchen. I will not help you scrape them off.
And most of all, and this is very very important, I do not have to accept a decision just because it is democratic. Don’t get me started on all the things that were set into law by the democratic process.
Apartheid. The Iraq War, Section 28. I thought those decisions were wrong. The decision to place missiles at Greenham Common was democratic. And wrong.
The democratic right you exercised was to dismantle our membership of the EU. I think that was wrong. The democratic right I have is to protest and seek to change that decision through all the democratic means that a democratic society has to offer. This referendum result doesn’t trump anything. It’s not the last word.
I certainly am not in any frame of mind to help you in the process of destroying all the things I value so much.
In interests of pulling together? Well we aren’t together. Our aims are not the same. I don’t think what has been sent hurtling down the hill can be fixed by an injection of positive thinking and cheery optimism.
And in the end it doesn’t matter if I can change the decision, or if it’s likely. The important thing is that I fight against it. The thing about protest is that it is powerful in ways that putting your X in a box can’t really match. The power of protest is the power of solidarity and the shared power to not feel overwhelmed by – in this case – the daily grind of racist and xenophobic rhetoric.
You had a choice to make, and I have the choice to accept it or not.
Protest is not whining. Protest is a democratic right.