If something is broken, throwing it on the rubbish heap wont fix it. Nor, for all its flaws, is there any better option to democracy available. The defeatist attitude that you cant make a difference for the better is exactly that: defeatist. It is not justified, either by the facts or by moral principle. In democracies such as that of Australia, ordinary people can raise their voices, which can be heard (isnt Russell Brand the obvious example of this?) and others can respond. The more sad reality is that a large part of the Australian electorate, for example, supports the xenophobic and unreasoning bipartisan approach that Australian governments, for example, apply to refugee seekers in boats. The fault for this shameful behaviour is a moral failure on the part of the great mass of the Australian people (btw, Im Australian), nor can this unpleasant moral reality be fobbed off onto anonymous plutocrats pulling strings - that would only work in a despotism, not in a democracy such as Australia does in fact still have, where the politicians do in fact tend to sway according to the will of the people, even when that will is rather ugly. The failures are, perhaps, to be laid squarely at the feet of the electorate who fail to do their duty to democracy and thereby to society.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 04:52:10 +0000
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