So let me see whether I understand what you're saying.
Not to describe any agreement or disagreement, just to find understanding.
Kitkat, you say that democracy is an illusion, popular movements change nothing because of what those within that movement want, but because of what that movement's leaders decide. The not-intelligent and/or not-sociopathic individual cannot affect any change, only the clever and the sociopaths are equipped to do that. There is no point in trying to address the masses to affect any change, and anything the masses may seem to desire is not, in fact, something they've picked, but what the intellopaths have picked.
The people who actually are clever enough to
get it cannot do anything about it, not against the sheer mass of the "dumb", lead by the intelligent sociopaths. They are the actual victims around here.
Is that about right?
On the premise that I've understood what you were trying to say, I think you
do actually have a few valid points. But, in the words of one who knew fascism from the inside:
Winston Churchill wrote:Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
I note this because your criticism sounds a bit, well, dangerous. The masses cannot and will not think for themselves? Change from below isn't possible? Democracy doesn't work? There are greater problems that
must be solved, the limited resources and all that? I've heard things that sound like that before, from sources you don't want to be associated with. Sources with which I do not wish to associate you, either. I read boiling anger and despair in that post, but based on things you have previously expressed, I know you aren't with the crowd who's rationales this sounds a lot like.
The thing is, broad social change doesn't happen because one shining leader steps forward and makes it happen. They can push through little changes in isolation like that, but even for that, they at least need followers who follow
them, if not their ideas. Broad social changes happen because the time is right, the circumstances are right and enough people are already leaning in that direction - it's the shining leader's job to give these people permission to act. Most people will not dare to express an opinion, or even admit that opinion to themselves, unless they perceive that they're not alone with it. They need the permission of the tribe to think anything, so they need some person or group, big and visible, so their opinion won't make them feel like the one thing they truly and utterly fear and despise - to be the other, the outsider,
the one not of the tribe. They need all this because, as long as they have a tribe to do stuff with, they don't actually have to feel responsibility for what they're doing/feeling/saying there. These people, at their heart, accept the individual's responsibility for their own actions. They are hence scared shitless of doing anything they might actually be responsible for - having a tribe do it, just following the herd, lets them abdicate that responsibility. What's more, it lets them pick and choose the moral and ethical standards they'd like to be perceived as living by, because of personal preference or a desire for tribal membership, which is a lot easier than actually living by certain moral or ethical standards. I think those with such an approach have been described as "sheeple", but I doubt
anyone can claim to be utterly free of it.
The sociopaths would be the ones who either don't care what they may be responsible for or not or who can rationalize that, really, they either have not choice or are acting morally to begin with, which they can use conveniently to set the minds of their followers at ease, also.
Of course, such shining leaders will have to make up their mind about certain details and side-issues, and once enough (or
any) people are following them,
must make up their mind about just about anything. If there's an issue, and they don't have an opinion about it, someone else might slip into the leader-slot and take over for them. They decide their positions not so much on what they think they can
get away with, or on how they think they might skirt responsibility, but on how it will strengthen their position. If the opportunity presents itself to combine that with something they themselves want to do anyway, they'll do that, of course. But, in their public statements and interactions with their followers, respecting the opinions of the tribe is just as important as it is for the followers, only from the other direction. Here's where the actual following happens though. Confronted with an issue they hadn't previously had a clear opinion on, many people will just adopt whatever the leaders they have chosen to follow tell them. After all, they are the leader of the people they already agree with, so this has to be the opinion of the tribe, they have to agree with it, also. They have always felt like that anway, they will insist.
But activism
can affect change. Because activism can create a new background noise, can make it seem more acceptable to have opinion x. Once enough people proclaim opinion x, even if many will do it only because it makes them feel like they are perceived as fashionable and one-the-frontier, "sheeple" may discover that this actually matches what they themselves feel like and that, now, they have permission to feel like this. They may rally behind a new leader then, or the existing leaders may find that, in order to maintain their position of authority, they better jump on the bandwagon in a hurry. At the same time, there's always a backlash, of course - as x becomes popular, those feeling uncomfortable about x will gang together also, with much the same effects regarding leadership.
One possible example would be intellectual property. ACTA, the Anti-Counterfiting Trade Agreement, was a crucial international treaty, one that we needed for economic stability and so forth. But activists started making a fuss about it. Enough people joined in the fuss, and "ratifying it is in our interest" became "we must ratify it, there is no alternative!", became "we will have a public debate and closely study the implications that this treaty
will bring" became "we never had any intention to just sign this!". Public opinion had been rallied against it by activists and the governments reacted. Once the first announcement was made that it wouldn't be signed, an Eastern European country I think it was, Estonia or Poland maybe, others followed suit quickly enough, jumping on that bandwagon. ACTA, thank god, is dead.
Declaring that x is pointless, and that y won't change anything strikes me as over-simplification. Yes, activism alone is pointless, the internet in and off itself won't change anything. But nothing exists in isolation, things, events and concepts are always interacting. It's a big, complicated mess.
Most of what makes our world what it is, most of the decisions, are made by those with the loudest voice/deepest pockets/most charisma, the sheeple will follow anything that makes them feel good/righteous/popular, rather than what they can, on thorough consideration, justify themselves. And while the individual activists can do little about what makes them feel like that, cannot create the perception that x is what the tribe has agreed on, a lot of individual activists can make x more and more palatable. Slowly, yes, often seemingly futile, but it can be done. If enough people do x, say x or what have you, a critical mass can eventually be achieved to make a fringe opinion a majority opinion. Sometimes, action from above, the leaders leading and whatnot, will help it along, sometimes even when they try to stop x - and have misjudged how popular it is or they themselves are and thus create a backlash in favor of x that is even stronger than the original movement in support of x.
Some sociopath or whatnot making a decision at the top, isolated and unpopular, and thus affecting actual lasting change happens, too, because of the corruption built into the system. But if they have half a brain, they'll first try to convince their own followers of this decision to make it palatable for the majority. They have to keep the sheeple on their side, lest they go and find themselves another side to be on, because change from below
can and
does happen.
Neither side in this, not the leaders nor the sheeple nor the enduring clue-sniffers, has a monopoly on running the show.
Yes, the establishment, with it's masses of followers, some of whom aren't even
that mindless, just socialized to join the herd, they have an utterly unreasonable advantage. They can raise masses to support social changes they want to implement rather easily. By doing stuff out of the spotlight, by rallying their unthinking followers, they make the vast majority of all decisions, regardless of what might be in the actual interests of the larger population. But it's the cooperation and consent of the ruled that lets them rule like that and, sometimes, that cooperation and consent aren't there for the rulers to draw on. And they cannot do just anything they like, too much change too fast won't be accepted. They have to make sure that there's at least a minimum of perceived support for what they do.
This is where democracy comes in. As long as the rulers don't rule on their lonesome, as long as there are parliaments that get a word in edgewise, any change those at the very top want to bring about can still fail when those on a lower stratum of power jump ship because they fear loosing popular support. It's hardly perfect, far from it - but what else is there?
Personally, I think current western models of democracy are too abstract, people are too isolated from the decision making. Rather than making any decisions, rather than seeing themselves as having any direct responsibility therein, people see the decision making as something that is done by a leader, as you describe, who they have hired to do the thinking and the being responsible for them.
But it
can work differently. In Switzerland, an inordinate number of decisions aren't made by parliament or whatnot - but by plebiscite. A while back, they made up their mind that huge bonuses and golden parachutes are bullshit. While the socially rather influential capitalist elites and the conservative government there rallied against it, the people decided it anyway. Democratically. A manager's bonus, be he a banker or in some other business, is now tied to their regular salary, there's a maximum that he or she may be paid without the shareholders specifically voting on it, and there's even a maximum of what bonus may be voted in for him. Now, I don't want to paint Switzerland as some happy paradise, but it shows that you
can have a society in which the sheeple take more responsibility and in which democracy is a little more than a mere excuse for sociopaths to do as they please/can get away with.
As they say, in a democracy, decisions get made by those who show up. Our problem is that, with big money controlling who gets to be heard, and the influence of the individual on actual decisions being between very limited and nill, too many people don't bother showing up and prefer watching honey-boo-boo and what have you. They haven't resigned themselves from interest in political affairs but, rather, never got interested to begin with. This is pretty much exactly what big money and many politicians want, since it means they can get away with many things without much public scrutiny, as the ones who do show up are likely to follow whatever ideology the leader has deemed right. Not because they agree or have even thought about it, of course, but because the leader leads. Democracy is thus a working excuse as to why we should have capitalism because it has been thus de-fanged. Once upon a time, those with the deep pockets
feared democracy, even Milton Friedman didn't like it - because people kept voting for stuff that was in their interest. Democracy was the enemy, has been perverted and defeated. They had to do that because, with democracy and a public that paid attention and showed up for the decision making, combined with increasing access to media and information, having politicians do their bidding quite as much as they liked became problematic, began looking more and more unlikely. They had to de-fang and pervert democracy because it worked. Maybe not perfectly, but it worked.
I'm not suggesting there was a conspiracy to do make this happen, no conspiracy was necessary. Market forces took care of it rather nicely.
If there were absolutely anything to be afraid of, don't you think I would have worn pants?
I said I have a big stick.
Has an almost universally corrupt judicial system (money).
