Democracy

Naturally, this is an ongoing topic.

Let me start by saying that I sometimes jokingly wonder what would happen if I were stopped by a cop for a traffic violation, and when I rolled down my window, said something like, "Hey, thanks, but I don't believe in police, so I guess thanks but no thanks. Have a nice day." This is illustrative in a couple ways: 1) that police are the last people on earth who could wrap their heads around their own irrelevance, and 2) that it is ludicrous in America to state that one is outside of the system.

Let's historicize. There has been one great challenge to American democracy: the secession of a number of states from the Union in 1861, on the grounds that: [Secession] illustrates the American idea that governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established. (Jefferson Davis). Basically, the slave-owning states, when Lincoln was elected, saw that the national government was irreconcilably opposed to the core beliefs of their fucked-up white asses. So the argument of the Confederacy is, "We came into the union of our free will, and we can leave when we please." Or: "Since we are already outside of the democratic system, and the majority will be turned against us, we will make this officially the case and truly exist outside the American democratic system by seceding."

Eventually this was settled, but to my knowledge there has never since been an "outside" of the American democracy. This despite consistently pathetic voter turn-out, widespread corruption, fraud, disputed ballots, and repeated demonstrations that party politics are only nominally beholden to their constituents. So, I would say, the real success of American democracy is the shared illusion that everyone is equally represented, that there is only one legitimate government of our land, that the law is the law, that hundreds of millions of middle class or midwestern voters are capable of providing a legitimate and reconcilable counter-balance to my vote, etc. One country, one law, one government, no "outside".

Compare this to our prickly friends in Iraq. The celebration over their historic voting was short-sighted, because when people don't vote in Iraq, it has a very different meaning than when people don't vote in America. If you don't vote in America, you still acknowledge the legitimacy of the traffic ticket. If you don't vote in Iraq, you might be at war with the authority giving traffic tickets. In a way, George Bush was right when he stressed the way that ordinary Iraqi voters braved the terrorists who wanted to stop them from voting, because what is at stake in Iraq is not (as much) the specific ideological/political direction of the country, but the desperate attempt to have a consensus government-- one where even if you disagree with the specific administration, you see yourself as inside of the system and subject to the laws of the present and future governments. So, in a way, everyone who voted (and was willing to accept the result if their party lost) was on the same side. What George Bush misses is the non-incidental nature of this "outside" of "democracy".

What Democrats in America don't understand is that there is no "real" position for them, historically, as a Left party; that American democracy depends on vacillations and reversals in power, that if the entire country moved to the right, and Democrats lost in a landslide, there would 1) be no question of the ballots' legitimacy, and 2) that any political rigidity can lead easily to a one-party system which "we" hate on principle--- although ironically one-party systems can be extremely flexible (see: China).

My question, then, arises from the example of Uganda as described in Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: why can't there be a one-party democracy? (The Ugandan ruling party is "all-inclusive".)

So, a list of questions:
-- Can there be a one-party democracy?
-- What is socially/historically necessary for universal inclusion to take root?
-- Can there be (has there been) a democracy that is not universally inclusive?
-- Is there a benefit to "holding off" on democracy when the result of voting will be a non-inclusive sovereignty? (ie: if an anti-democratic or exclusionary group came to power in Iraq)
-- Is it completely meaningless to not vote in America, given that not voting is interpreted as tacit acceptance of the legitimacy of the result?