Twitteretter

We have a saying in Spain, ‘no hay dos sin tres’. Something like ‘all things come in threes’. I had to write previously about the rights to unionise and demonstrate. Sadly, the attack on fundamental democratic rights we are experiencing seems to also come in threes, as illustrated by Republican Party efforts in Georgia to restrict the right to vote, in a reaction to inexistent voting fraud the Republicans themselves invented. The challenge with democracy is that it is the only political system that tolerates the use of its institutions by those aiming to destroy it. That is both its unique strength and value, that total inclusiveness, and its biggest weakness, which makes it reliant on protection by its citizens to survive. It is no coincidence all these things are happening simultaneously and perpetrated by the international conservative movement. The attack on our democracy is much more orchestrated and organised than we may think, and it won’t do for us to sleepwalk into its demise ...

In Twitteretter 362, I covered the right to unionise, under attack in some Western democracies. Today, I have to address the right to demonstrate. It seems our society made significant advances in the XIX and XX centuries in the rights of its citizens to represent their own interest, in the public arena and in the workplace, whilst the XXI century is a period where we are taking backward steps. In the UK, the Tory government is currently passing a bill that will significantly restrict, with coronavirus as the excuse, but with permanent effect, the right of citizens to peacefully demonstrate. This right is fundamental to citizens’ action in a democracy, and cannot be restricted except to ensure basic safety. The government is reopening pubs, restaurants, stadia and theatres, at the same time as outlawing open air demonstrations. Yet again, even their disguise is lazy. If the UK accepts this bill, it will have lost something fundamental, achieved only after hundreds of years of struggles...

Let me start by nailing my colours to the mast. Democracy, all the way. The only system that can empower all citizens, protect minorities, enshrine civil liberties and avoid abuse of power. However, it has its problems. It is functional when leaders and parties place the interest of the citizenship above their own, govern for all and not just for their side. Otherwise, it swings wildly in cycles of power which are used by each faction to undo the progress made by the previous incumbents, fighting oppositions which oppose for opposition’s sake. The ideal for democracy to progress is for moderate groups to alternate power, keeping a somewhat general direction of travel, moderated towards their political leaning but built on their predecessors’ achievements. With today’s polarisation, this is not what we are seeing in UK, US, Spain and other countries and, when we do not, democracy becomes ineffective, gridlocked, and autocracies shine in comparison by their ability to get things done Len...

Donald Trump has been acquitted, yet again, at his second impeachment trial. The Republican party has, with some honourable exceptions, chosen to appease the Trump voter base, to not alienate them. They have not exonerated Trump, but hidden behind a technicality, their opinion that an ex president cannot be impeached. They have, again, put party before country. In trying to avoid short term electoral damage, they have set a clear precedent for the next wannabe dictator. It is worth taking the risk of trying to destroy democracy, so long as your opposition does not have a two third majority in the Senate. Worst case, if your coup d’etat fails, you just have to decamp, for a while, to a golfing resort in Florida, letting matters cool down before possibly returning, for a second, perfected attack. The Republican party is hoping the courts will wash their soiled laundry, so they can keep their hands clean. Let the judges do what those making the laws will not. It is a dereliction of duty L...

Noun, a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a time in the past. Interesting how valuable nostalgia is to disciplines such as literature or cinema. How effectively the bringing back to life of the past can elicit strong sentiment in their audiences, giving them license to transport themselves to a time past, remembering the good and forgetting the bad, as one can choose to do in fiction. Interesting also how it can be catastrophic in politics, how when the citizenship takes license to try to bring about a time past, which they remember as being better than the present, they invariably succeed at rescuing what was bad, and little of what was good. Politics is about building the World of tomorrow, accepting that the past is gone but learning from it. It’s about recovering, maybe, something that worked well, but realistically adapting it to future circumstance, accepting that circumstance, environment, cannot be wound back. Politics calls for aspiration and ambition, not nostalgia...

One day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has issued articles of impeachment against him, based on debunked conspiracy theories of corrupt practices related to Hunter Biden’s business dealings and election fraud. The process is doomed to failure, given democrat control of House and Senate, but it is a timely reminder of the precarious position US democracy finds itself in after years of organised, meticulous attack. Greene is an affiliate of QAnon, a cult which believes a deranged narrative of politicians in power and captains of industry being child rapists, murderers and cannibals, akin to the narrative about Jews which took a similar cult to power in 1930s Germany, with well known global consequences. The problem is, she has been elected to congress on that ticket. Many may have thought, after Trump’s defeat, that US democracy had been saved, but we are not out of the woods yet, the election was a stay of execution, much work lies ahead ...

The title paraphrases the Bill Clinton 1992 election campaign slogan, aiming to focus the debate on economic performance. The implication was that we are in a post-political period, where ideology is no longer important and where what matters is economic outcomes. This is a view shared by many, and the basis of most elections these days. Let’s not vote on how we may fundamentally change society to be fairer, but on how we may grow the economy so we all get a little bit more despite horrific distribution inequality. The Capitol riots, however, help us refocus. What good is it to have a reasonably good economy when the legal security afforded by democratic institutions may be in peril? How does money help you in a country run by a bully who may, at his whim, direct angry mobs against you with a single tweet? This could destroy your job, your company or even your life. If your safety and security are beholden to the whims of a sociopath and their sycophants, is economic comfort enough?...

An announcement of new lockdown restrictions yesterday by the UK government in light of a novel coronavirus strain which is out of control in the London and South East area was immediately followed, predictably but still disappointingly, by news of full trains and jammed roads, as many in the capital tossed themselves to the four winds, in direct contravention of the advice, abandoning the about to be locked down area for others less restricted. With them, they will take the virus. Given the current prevalence in London, an average of at least two people in each one of those carriages would have been infected, and now many more will take the new strain to their extended families and friends all over the UK. Society and democracy are based on a balance between citizen freedom and civic responsibility. When we demand the first but relinquish the second, we abandon democracy and functioning society for dysfunctional individualism with ultimately dire consequences we are about to witness...

Normality is slowly restored in the US political system, after the incumbent president’s failed attempt to overthrow the election. The mainstream body political breathes a sigh of relief and declares that institutions held surprisingly well and the effort got nowhere. Alas, this may be complacent. The orchestrated attack on truth, fact and reality will have long lasting consequences and could be, if not remediated, a stepping stone, increasing the chances of success of the next attempt. On thinking about this, it is worth quoting, one more time, Hannah Arendt: ‘The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for who the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist’. Through this prism, today’s outcome is not a victory, but rather a precarious truce, an adjournment, calling for vigilance and action, not celebration...

In the last few days I have assisted, with dismay, to the rule of law debate in the context of the approval of EU budgets for the coming six years. Hungary and Poland are digging their heels, refusing to approve the budget unless funds release is decoupled from rule of law performance. Their argument is that these are separate issues and should be handled as such. The disagreement really hinges on each party’s understanding of the EU. In fact, the different understandings of what it is, in different member states, pose one of its greatest challenges. Some see the EU as a common market, an economic construct, but others see it as a political union. The answer really is in its founding treaties, which have democracy and the rule of law at their centre, and economic cooperation attached to them. This is the Union Poland and Hungary joined. They may have done it for economic reasons, but they entered a, first and foremost, rule of law, democratic club. Rule of law is not negotiable  Le...

The last few years have been marked by the accession to power, in a number of countries, of regimes and people we can define as nihilists, who operate as if reality did not exist, and could be moulded by their will. When reality goes, accountability goes with it, creating the perfect environment for those who govern for power and not the governed. Several conditions must exist for nihilists to succeed. The one I focus on today is badly understood media neutrality. In the interest of balance, Western media, for a number of years, chose to present reality and falsehood as equivalent positions, as opinions, refusing to highlight falsehood as being different to fact, concerned with being accused of bias, negligent of their duty to report fact. This created fertile ground for the likes of Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro or Farage to sew confusion. Hannah Arendt, the chronicler of a previous brand of nihilism, explained it thus: ‘The only way to recognise reality is that it is common to all of us’...

The post’s title, by the way, is not a true reflection of reality. Rather, it is the feeling I had, for a few minutes, when I woke up on Wednesday morning to a sea of Trump red covering the United States map. I do care profoundly about the outcome of this election. I value civility, fairness and equanimity, I treasure democracy, I believe win-win is the only deal worth making and I understand we need very fast action on environmental issues to prevent an irreversible global catastrophe which would make the current pandemic feel like a party. But, faced with uncertainty and fear, with a possible devastating loss, our psyche triggers off our defence mechanism. If I don’t care, I cannot get hurt. So let’s just pretend that I don’t. This is a normal human reaction, which you see everywhere in life. Pretend indifference to mitigate potential failure and, as a result of that pretence, fail. I recommend action instead. Fight for your desired outcome, bring about the success you so much desire...

Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu were household names not that long ago. Today, few know the names, never mind their doctrines. At a time when selfish kings and ruthless oligarchies ruled, the abovementioned opened our eyes to the basic concepts that brought about the Enlightment period and, with it, democracy. Separation of powers, the right to vote and, above all, the social contract, Rousseau’s idea that the power of a state and its leaders exists only in as much as it is willingly granted by its citizens, in the expectation that it will be wielded in the interest of all those granting it. Alas, this does no longer, in many cases, hold true. Many of today’s regimes have grabbed power and no longer receive it from citizens (Putin or Xi, for example). In other societies, governments represent some, but not all (Brexit Britain, Trump’s USA, Torra’s Catalonia). The social contract that legitimated our democratic systems survives no longer, relinquished in febrile populism...

You have to give it to Donald Trump on grounds of originality. His relentless attack on the institutions he presides over, with the apparent objective of dismantling them, based on their alleged corruption, is something democracy seems to not have planned for. Democracies have clear, outlined defence plans for attacks by foreign powers, attacks by their own military or security forces and even attacks by their citizens, known respectively as invasion, coup d’etat and revolution. But they may not have built in protections for attack by their own president and ruling party. This is an eventuality that the Founding Fathers, Jefferson, Washington, Adams or Franklin, could not have conceived of, after such hard fought democratic independence. If the president himself leads a revolution against his own regime, who will command the military to quash it? What is the Secret Service, entrusted with protecting president and presidency, to do when the former attacks the latter? A conundrum indeed...

Last weekend I rewatched Alan J. Pakula’s excellent political drama recounting events leading to Richard Nixon’s resignation as US President, known as the Watergate scandal. A good movie, with an excellent cast, which gives us insight into the workings of the US democracy of the day. As the scandal unravelled, Nixon used plausible deniability to preserve his position. However, after US Congress issued articles of impeachment, the Senate authorised a wide ranging investigation into the affair, by a 77-0 majority, which proved Nixon’s involvement. Such a majority is unthinkable today, at a time when the Senate, in similar circumstances surrounding Donald Trump, splits down party lines (with the honourable exception of Mitt Romney) and conducts a farce hearing to quickly acquit Trump rather than investigate further. It seems that 1970s GOP Senators put democracy above party, whilst today’s GOP Senators put party above democracy, a worrying evolution of democratic values in American societ...

It is not unusual in parliamentarian democracies such as Spain or UK to hear those who profess themselves republican argue that a republic is a more democratic, therefore superior system than a monarchy. They claim the monarchy is undemocratic, as the monarch is not elected, but rather inherits his or her position and this lack of election renders their role, and their existence, undemocratic. However, this is paradoxical in that a system, and the laws that sustain it, derive their legitimacy, become actual laws, by their acceptance by the general will of society. It misses the point of democracy. In a territory in which the general will is to live in a parliamentarian monarchy, or even to not stop living in a parliamentarian monarchy, this system is eminently democratic, as it enacts the will of society as to what system to live in. A minority revolution, in such circumstance, to install a republic, or remove the monarch, is in fact undemocratic, in that it opposes that general will...

Yesterday’s Twitteretter stated that democracy is not the rule of the majority, but much more than that. It also stated that many citizens nowadays do not appreciate this, and make exactly that simplification. The worrying question, for me, is how can this be possible? How can it be that citizens that have lived in democracies for, in some cases, such as UK, a couple of centuries, fail to understand the basis of the political system they live in? The answer is lack of political education. Our education system devotes much more effort to creating individuals effective in the workplace than to creating individuals effective in society. It is all about the economy, it is all about productivity, it is all about wealth creation. Somehow, we build citizens who are much better at creating wealth than at deciding how it must be shared in society. This is a fortunate combination for those intent on keeping the lion share of it. It is high time that we teach citizens to truly take back control...

The title of this post may be shocking to many, since the understanding of democracy in our society has been simplified, reduced, to the rule of the majority. Democracy is understood as a system where one man gets one vote and where whatever is voted for the majority must come to pass. Period. But democracy is much more complex, and many things are above the rule of the majority. The fist, separation of powers. Democracy is a system in which individuals can rely on the judiciary to protect their rights and in which all citizens are equal in front of the law. Democracy is a system where the basic rights of individuals are protected, and where the rights of some do not trample over the rights of others. It is a system where violence by the stronger is not permitted in the political discourse, and where the right of citizens to information trumps (sic) the right of others to disinform. Without these and many other checks and balances, we don’t have a democracy, we have a mob dictatorship...

Mainstream politicians tend to coalesce with the fringes to serve short term aims, accepting coalition with extremists to get to power, expecting them to remain marginal and return to oblivion once it suits the majority partner. The US Senate made this calculation in refusing to hold a serious hearing on impeachment of a rogue, populist and nihilist president, the Spanish PP when bringing Vox into coalition government in Madrid. These miscalculations are frequent in history, each time with the same outcome. Extremists can be marginalised but, once you rescue them from oblivion, you open a Pandora’s box and no longer have the power to put them back in. Once you lend undeserved credibility to their ideas, once you present them as legitimate to the populus and accept anger, hate and animosity in politics, you lose control. Hitler, Caesar, Putin or Mussolini rode these waves, with the initial connivance and later aghast helpless horror of the political establishments they ultimately depose...

The other night I rewatched the Philip Kaufman movie adaptation of the seminal Milan Kundera novel, a book you should read, if you haven’t, and, at the very least, a movie you should watch. It makes you appreciate how lucky we are to be born, and live, in the social freedoms Western democracies afford us, secure in the protection of the rule of law. This story is a stark warning to those tempted by the easy solutions peddled by autocratic regimes. Tomas, its protagonist, pays a very heavy personal price for trying to defend his intellectual dignity, for refusing to retract an idea expressed. He sacrifices, by not yielding to the system, first his career and, ultimately, his life. Kundera, who grew and lived in an autocratic regime, describes with brutal realism the humiliating choices his protagonist must make to survive. The suffocating, crushing, relentless pressure he is put under is Kafkian in its overwhelming dimension. Be careful of letting the wolf in, tempted by false promises...