Post-Trump American Democracy
Joe Biden\'s victory in the United States Elections is a relief not only for Americans but for the world.
Joe Biden\'s victory in the United States Elections is a relief not only for Americans but for the world.
The election of Biden was a victory for common sense and optimism for the future of democracy. Biden is expected to restore the character of US democracy that was harmed under Trumpism.
In the four years of the Trump era, the US became an ultra-nationalist, anti-immigration Banana Republic that negated its role as the de facto leader of globalization. Democratic dysfunction during the Trump era is like an intermittent fever. Biden\'s landslide victory proves the US can carry out democratic recuperation.
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The question remains as to whether Trump\'s popularity and influence in the Republican Party will soon disappear from the US political landscape. Trumpism still strongly sits on the seats of the US senate or congress. Nearly half of US citizens voted for Trump in the election and it is not impossible for him to run again in 2024.
The election of Trump, a reality show personality, in the 2016 election justifies the signal of democracy as a contradictory system. As indicated by a number of thinkers and philosophers, this majority vote-based system has inherently had many problems. Trump was elected in an ultra-partisan political democracy system, thick with racial issues, widening social inequalities and populist conservatism.
The same problem is faced by democracy in a number of other countries. Besides the US and Trump (2016), Britain chose Brexit in a referendum on membership in the European Union (2016). A number of controversial politicians who won their elections using the issue of populism, such as British Prime Minister (PM) Boris Johnson (2019), Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (2018), Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (2016), Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan (2014), Indian PM Narendra Modi (2014), and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban (2010), are just a few examples.
Philosophers\' worries
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their book How Democracies Die describe how democracy has collapsed in various parts of the world. Not through a military coup or a violent revolution, but in the form of a gradual autocracy. Democracy is so fragile, even for a country like the US,
which is known to be mature in democracy. Trump is free to infect and paralyze US democracy, which turns out not to be immune to the autocracy virus.
Many groups dislike democracy, dictators, tyrants, demagogues, or fanatics-extremists.
Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man (1992) once warned of the potential for "political decay" in an established democratic system. Practices of manipulation, collusion and nepotism are prone to undermine the openness, justice and equality promised by democracy. Many groups dislike democracy, dictators, tyrants, demagogues, or fanatics-extremists. Philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, considered democracy not worthy of acceptance.
Socrates made an analogy of managing a country with democracy like captaining a ship while sailing the ocean. Who should be the ship\'s helmsman? A skipper who is skilled and experienced or anyone as long as he is elected democratically. Socrates considered it illogical to choose just anyone to be the captain of the ship. He was worried that people, who were uneducated, poor in references, and easily instigated, had the right to take part in important political decisions.
Plato also did not believe in democracy. For him, a state could be good only if it was led by philosophers (philosopher kings). For Plato, democracy was the final chapter of the collapse of the ideal state into tyranny. In the end, the people would choose an autocracy to overcome the "chaos" caused by democracy. So was Aristotle, who considered democracy as a failure product of majority opinion-based leadership utopia.
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The big thinkers were dubious about the reasoning of the voting population. They judged human nature as generally superficial, banal, ignorant and selfish. They criticized democracy as a system of government that was inherently inefficient, corrupt and gave birth to greedy-ambitious politicians. In a democracy, there were often mob rules, intolerance of arguments, or lots of the power transactions of oligarchs to share access to wealth.
The philosophers were not completely wrong. The democratic process had indeed been proven to produce bad figures or human tragedies. Democracy once put a psychopath-maniac, like Adolf Hitler, as the ruler of Germany to wage World War II in order to realize his ambition to establish the Third Reich in 1933.Digital era democracy also won Trump in the US in 2016.
Digital era democratic crisis
Democracy fights for human freedom, justice and equality. However, in the digital era, the mantra of democracy does not necessarily lead to a more peaceful, safer, more prosperous, or equal situation. The fact of gaps and polarization even seems to be widening.
Social media is a catalyst for feuds and disputes. Information technology allows individuals to easily and cheaply access information and opinions. Open society in the digital age does not automatically cultivate an open attitude or mind. On the contrary, it even opens Pandora\'s box for the proliferation of closed, conservative, extreme, insular thinking.
Social media has become a catalyst for political polarization, different political camps cannot discuss facts in a civilized manner.
The democracy in the digital era seems to be "anarchistic", because the clash of paradigms goes on non-stop. Social media has become a catalyst for political polarization, different political camps cannot discuss facts in a civilized manner. Politics has returned to be tribalistic, about friends or foes, about banally true or false questions. Umberto Eco, an Italian philosopher and novelist, called the rush of expressions and the flood of opinion on social media "the invasion of the idiots".
Social media is filled with anger and screaming. Shallow feuds take over conversation and reasoning. The digital world makes it easy for anyone to access and share information. This gives rise to various problems, especially when this high-level communication technology does not keep pace with the psychological emotional level of its users. Humans are emotionally still in ancient times, but possess god-level technology.
Smart technology is increasingly used to spread sensations, seek attention, or indulge in emotions. Contradictions and problems of democracy become daily shows and information menus. Political conspiracies, social tensions, economic disparities are intertwined with the increasing loss of jobs due to digitalization. Irritation and frustration accumulate, becoming rice husk which is easily ignited by politicians who intend to exploit.
The enemy of democracy in the digital era is different from Karl Popper\'s (The Open Society and Its Enemy) indication, that it is no longer authoritarian ideologies such as fascism or communism. However, from within democracy itself, elite politics are manipulative. Trump with a Twitter gun is an example of a digital democracy which is behaving badly. He uses Twitter to fuel social sentiment and market his political agenda. Using democratic channels to voice anti-democratic sentiments.
On the other hand, democracy is even considered incapable of building social cohesion to agree on common interests and goals.
In contrast to the democratic system that seems chaotic in the US and various parts of the world, many people are amazed by the success stories of China or Singapore. These two non-democratic countries are considered to be efficient in building and improving the welfare of their citizens. On the other hand, democracy is even considered incapable of building social cohesion to agree on common interests and goals.
Learning from America
In the book The Life and Death of Democracy (2009), John Keane identifies the history of non-linear democracy, and the practice of democracy is also diverse. Democracy is not a kind of "political destiny" of human history. Democracy once appeared in the classical Greek era, then disappeared and reappeared in the enlightenment era with the birth of the US as the first modern democracy in 1776.
Until 1945 there were only 11 democratic countries in the world. Democracy began to flourish in several countries after communism fell. Currently, at least 110 countries are classified as democratic. It is not impossible that democracy will be erased from the history of human civilization if demagogues and dictators succeed in manipulating grassroots aspirations. The first two decades of the 21st century indicate this situation, the enemies of democracy are writhing.
In Indonesia, democracy was present in the 1945-1959 period, then disappeared, and was reborn in 1998 with the victory of reform. Democracy is considered to have opened the "pandora box" in the emergence of religious extremism, the spread of acts of terrorism, triggering social polarization. Including the creation of fierce partisan political groups [cebong (tadpole) vs kampret (bat)] in the last two presidential elections.
The diseases of democracy can be cured by increasing the dose of democracy, said John Dewey (The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy).
Winston Churchill once stated that democracy is the best of the worst system. Democracy assumes the existence of the wisdom of the crowd. Politics is a common affair, not the monopoly of one leader or a group of elites. The task of the elite is to ensure that the wisdom of democracy is internalized to the citizens into a value system. The diseases of democracy can be cured by increasing the dose of democracy, said John Dewey (The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy). America succeeds in getting rid of the diseases of democracy in a democratic manner.
Lukas Luwarso, Hubert Humphrey Fellow, Maryland University, 2005-2006