“you Can fool all of the people some of the time. And to some all the time. But you can’t fool all the people all the time”. The famous justification of Abraham Lincoln in favor of democracy was omitted a key fact: democracy is a game of majorities, and yes you can fool most of the people most of the time.
that Is why democracy tends to be autodestructora. Their greatest enemy are the voters. Some of the worst dictators of the contemporary era -Hitler and Mussolini, among others – came to power by winning elections. The who rose through wars or coups were legitimized then by calling for plebiscites, mass. Their spiritual descendants are the populists, demagogues and authoritarian governments that abound in the world of today: Putin, for example, or a Mature, abusing the votes to perpetuate their dictatorships, or a Bolsonaro that rises to the Presidency of Brazil recommending the dictatorship as a solution to the problems of the country, or a Trump, to whom an electoral platform it is not but a pretext to increase their own power, or some independistas catalanes that exploit flaws in the electoral system to marginalize the majority of their fellow citizens.
But the biggest challenge facing democracy today arises, almost not seen, or fear, from outside the electoral system, in no way depends upon the candor exploitable voters.
In the US, this challenge was unveiled a couple of months ago in the new book by Bob Woodward, the veteran journalist, whose fame comes from his research in the 70 years of the last century by that “deep throat” that gave you the secrets of the crimes of president Richard Nixon in connection with Watergate. The last great publication of Woodward has been Fear: Trump in the White House (Fear: Trump in the White House), a research, based on interviews, about how the Presidency of that parvenu politician that ignores the structures that must manage and the environment that must preside in Washington, D. C. According to recorded texts by Woodward, in conversations with some of the helpers most intimate of the president, he called it “idiot rampant” and “liar, loser”, with “the intellectual level of a child”- which served to sell the book and fill out reviews. Sold over one million copies.
But the revelation most interesting, and relatively little commented on, was that there are staff people in the White House who is dedicated to steal drafts of the table of the president’s job to avoid that sign: that is to say, that there are bureaucrats and technicians, not democratically elected, who are engaged in thwarting the policy of the elected of the people.
in the Case of Trump, I think it’s okay to be that way. All that you should do what leads to the good of the country and the world. But there is no doubt that the challenge to democracy is clear, insidious and disturbing. The statements of Woodward, published on September 3, were confirmed the next day, when there was an article in the New York Times, supposedly signed by a “high official category of the White House”, including the methods by which a few “heroes clandestine (…) were working diligently from within the Administration to thwart the attempts of the president and silenced their worst instincts.” The author claims to be “part of the Resistance” internal to the Presidency Trump.
Like all coup-military, revolutionary, politically illegitimate, valid court and eminent grey of the history, the internal Resistance of the White House insist on its right to exercise a role almost constitutional, protecting the institutions of the excesses of a leader dangerous or harmful, and until, according to the text of the article in the New York Times, “defending democracy”. His “primary duty”, he welcomed the infiltrator, “is to serve the country as long as the president acts in a manner contrary to the well-being of the republic.” The one that appropriates the collective rights of the citizenship is not a democrat, but a arrogant. Which diverts the functions of an elected chair towards the intruders, anonymous lack of legitimacy democratic is a seditious, that you try to make your own vision before you fulfill the law or obey the constitution or to conform to the philosophical principles of democracy.
Interestingly, this evidence of profound change in the operation of the system of government of the united states seems that they forgot or were discarded almost as soon as they came out. And no longer say more. In the united states of Trump experience everyday the effects of the politics of distraction. With each new stupid notion or insult or nonsensical the president manages to change the agenda of computer media, hide the facts, delete important data and cripple its critics, rellenándoles the mouth and gut of an amount indigestible mush, which leaves them parpando ineffectively, as geese producers of foie gras within walking distance to trips under his weight uncontrollably. Therefore, the news is a kaleidoscope of fragments, blinding and what is truly important is indistinguishable or evanescent.
The fact that the country is governed by a few anonymous in place of the elected executive -that, in effect, the democracy supposedly a model of the world has become a technocracy – must call attention. Up to a certain point, knowing that the president lacks the authority is no novelty. The known balances of the american constitution -Congressional oversight, the eminence of the courts, the federal system that delegates to the individual states a large part of the sovereign responsibility – are designed to prevent despotism and to keep the president within a sphere pompous but little enhanced. Instead, the president is the president: the “boss”, as stated in the song that touches the official band in all their travels to areas of the country, the end point “where he manages to stop the guilt of everything”, as said by president Truman. The citizens expect the president to be able to send, at least in the sense of directing the general direction of the policy; they do not want a few technocrats will replace.
Ironically, the rise of technocracy is one of the reasons for the frustration among the electorate that gave rise to the choice of Trump and one of the factors that denied the Democratic party’s conquest of the Senate in the recent elections. Parallel events have been demonstrations populists in Europe. The domain of the technocrats of the European Union on representatives elected by the people was an essential part of the background of the Brexit. The triumph of the populist in Italy was a reflection of the popular rejection of the inheritance technocrat of the period of Monti. Interventions undemocratic technocrats make Trump in a sort of martyr of the people.
In the US, the worst consequence of the control of the technocrats is that those sedicientes guerillas in the White House hiding the drafts more nefarious of the president you are protecting from the effects of their own stupidity. Trump is softened. Your policy leaves less disastrous. And perhaps worst of all is that the presence of a monster at the helm of the superpower in the world it is normal. His monstrosity is becoming less obvious and their deformation moral and mental less monstrous. We are getting used. No longer shock us, the fact that every morning comes out another tweet to be offensive, illiterate, a liar, or mad. The madness is back to normal. Bullshit, become routine; the lies, regular; the threat of violence slightly chuscas; the insults, signs of a label, perhaps eccentric but manageable. The allegations of the alleged crimes of Trump-the fraud, the corruption, the sexual harassment – are so frequent that neither call attention to themselves. The lies fall from your mouth with the normal of the autumn leaves.
The level of acceptance enjoyed by the president is evident in the fact that, now more than ever, the republican party is identified with its personality and with the policy trumpista. Skeptics within the party, filtered by the elections midterm, have resigned, retired, died, or converted to trumpismo. Who is there to blame? What the electorate by showing a defect of democracy? Or to the technocrats, whose arrogance causes the reaction to populist?
*Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is a historian and holder of the chair, William P. Reynolds of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA).
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