Democracy: The Mustard on the Hot Dog

Posted by jlubans on May 08, 2024

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Caption: Charlie, the Sneezing Dog.

Achoo! Charlie, daughter Mara's pooch, eager to get out, sneezed. It reminded my daughter of a study
about wild dogs
and how they seem to vote by sneezing.
Enough sneezes and the pack goes on the hunt.
Too few sneezes and the pack goes back to sleep.
So, like democratic bees, these animals suggest they favor democracy.
Which all reminds me of our human quest for democracy. I wrote about it in 2016 and it appears, revised, below.
Its reappearance is timely; 2024 is another election year.
We, in America, are already seeing two diametrically opposed political philosophies clash and do battle to get four more years.
While some dead people will vote in November, for the most part America's elections are honest and the results can be largely trusted.
Rampant dishonesty, alas, appears most in campaign propaganda. There are no more partisan people than those behind their candidate and anything pretty much goes.
Mudslinging is centuries old and sometimes the mud sticks but most often the electorate lets it slide and votes on what the candidate can do for him or her.
While we can have differences about how best to govern - some preferring a monarchy, some a dictator, some an elected government, and some to be left alone, self-governing.
There has been some global erosion of democracy. Some of that decline is self-inflicted.
The ancient Greeks did their duty by serving in their government for a set time and then leaving. Nowadays there are millions of permanent government employees doing the job those proto-democrats did for the Hellenic state.
The bureaucracy redefines democracy.
All those FTEs do things, especially regulating the rest of us. Many rules are good and essential but many are arbitrary, developed and enforced without open discussion or vote.
I have seen the rule making in a nongovernmental organization. It is what we do as we impose our world view on others and we justify doing so, always for the greater good.
Alas, sometimes that greater good is for someone's personal satisfaction in telling and mandating how others are to behave.
Hence the decline in personal freedom and responsibility!
So, what is democracy?
E. B. White - in wartime England - was asked to write a statement on the meaning of democracy. His response was enlightening and entertaining - indeed Australianesque.*
I have separated out and annotated White's defining points I think especially relevant and illuminating for the democratic workplace.
The Meaning of Democracy:
It is the line that forms on the right.
Egalitarian, democracy is. If you break into line, someone will mention it to you, probably not in the kindest of words.
It is the don't in don't shove.
Mind your manners; say please, thank you, and would you mind? As a boss you have no inherent right to push people around. In stressful times, keep a sense of humor.
It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which sawdust slowly trickles.
This, my favorite element of White's democracy, addresses the narcissism inherent among the people who believe they are God's gift and the Saviour of humanity, be it at a national level or in a McDonalds in Des Moines.
Democracy anchors the easily inflatable, like a boss, down to earth. The boss who claims full personal credit for the people doing the day-to-day and making the wheels of industry hum, does so at his own ego-tripping risk. The stockholders will believe the stuffed shirt in good times, but the workers - no sycophants, they - know better, much better.
It is the dent in the high hat.
You bet; enjoy your high hat; just do not expect everyone to think you are somehow above the rest of us, the hoi polloi. If you do, your hat - in a democracy - becomes a magnet (and target) for the stray slingshot.
As bees and wild dogs will aver,
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
In the workplace, the best boss knows her idea can only get better if she shares and builds on it with ideas from the people doing the work.
It is the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere.
Libraries have changed since the internet but when you go into one and think about it, yes, there is a communion in the hallowed purpose and tradition of the peoples university.
As for vitality, that is in scarce supply these days. However, I did observe plenty of vitality (and a surfeit of communion), at a Vermont town hall meeting, a walking, talking, breathing example of democratic decision-making.
It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet.
Abraham Lincoln?s unfinished work at Gettysburg comes to mind: It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. Democracy in the office is also unfinished work.
It's the mustard on the hot dog.
That is the piquant sense when people feel equal and effective, when they stress We over Me and mean it. It is when the group achieves what no individual can and everyone concludes, Wow, we did it!

*By Australianesque I refer to the national healthy anti-authoritarian bent. Yes, they have rules, some silly - which few obey - and while the population can be overly dependent on government services they hesitate not to cut down the tall poppy or deflate the overblown boss.

Copyright John Lubans 2013, 2016,2021, 2024

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Comments

Posted by Stephanie Williams on May 09, 2024  •  07:29:58

I think I will vote for Kennedy.

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