Mature Democracy

I was walking home from work today and ran into another demonstration, this one even bigger and more spirited then the one I reported on over the weekend. Here are some of the images of this second event, a march by government employers and labor unions against government “austerity” proposals.

Seeing the demonstration got me thinking about democracy and the way it is practiced in different countries.

As everyone knows, Spain is a young democracy where, as the New York Times likes to remind us, people have still not internalized the rules of civic comportment that inhere in other societies with long-standing parliamentary traditions.

The US is, of course, a mature democracy where people have long since understood the rules and fine points of citizenship.

For example, when people in the United States vote for change, they know better than to expect a change in policy. And when the people who voted for "change" see that it is not forthcoming, they understand that it is their solemn civic responsibility to not only not believe their lying eyes but to make excuses for the people who took their votes and did not deliver.

Moreover, they have successfully internalized the notion that the ultimate arbiter of public life and social morality are those wonderful entrepreneurs who, as they have been told time and time again, “create the jobs” that make us all prosperous and happy.

This is why when the new President for Change (PFC) gives corporations nearly $1 trillion to resolve the problems they created out of their own arrogance, greed and carelessness, and asks them for nothing in return, the citizenry in general, and the people who voted him in particular, know that it is absolutely no time for serious questioning. They know that he and his aides are smart men and women who would never knowingly go against the interests of the vast majority of the people who elected them in favor of the moneyed classes that staff the Administration and that showered them with money during the campaign.

In a mature democracy, the press understands its proper role. At a time when newsrooms are being decimated by budget cuts dictated, in turn, by “entrepreneurial” investors who care little if anything about protecting the vital role that the press plays in a functioning democracy, they understand that it is their role to snarkily describe anyone who dares suggest that the country, and the enterprise they work for, are being led by people who are essentially amoral, as a dreamer ( as in "not interested in real grown-up solutions") or some kind of 60s left over.

In fact, I've even heard of cases of journalists working in newsrooms where union power has been smashed and where the fear of firing is thus constant who nonetheless rail against unions and the benefits that unions have conferred upon the rank-and-file in other areas of the economy. But, of course, that's what people are supposed to do in a mature democracy; it is the individual’s job to internalize the sense of fear, insecurity and distrust visited upon them by government and business, multiply its strength, and pass it on to their fellow citizens.

In immature democracies like Spain people are evidently much less responsible. For example, when the Spanish prime minister who was elected with the near unanimity of the left side of the political spectrum announces salary rollbacks for public employees and curtailment of medical benefits for all citizens, those same left-wing voters take to the street against him!

They organize rallies that put him on notice that the votes they gave him can and will be taken away. And in truly immature fashion, they refuse to make excuses for him, reminding him instead of him of his past and present connivances with big business as well as the international agencies that do its bidding.


(Translation of little green sign: “We must cut back on: Bank profits, Subsidies for rich friends, No show jobs, Inept consultants, Corrupt politicians)


And get this, they even go so far as to suggest, in direct contravention of the deeply meditated wisdom of the business press, that money is not lacking at all in Spain and that the key to maintaining the social services that separate civilized societies from those where the mentality of the frontier casino predominates can be recouped from doing silly things like raising taxes on the rich and cutting budgets for armaments!


(translation: "There isn't a shortage of money but rather an excess of crooks" The picture is of Emilio Botín the Spanish Head of megabank HSBC)

I sometimes wonder if Spaniards will ever learn the credulous docility and passivity that being citizens in a mature democracy really requires. Meanwhile, I am sure NPR and the New York Times will keep us informed about Spain’s struggle to grow up.


Cops busy intimidating the crowd.