I received a link from Amazon today touting a new book by Michael Hanlon:
Humankind is not doomed, we may be around for millions of years yet. We have already survived one of the most extraordinary planet-wide catastrophes - the Ice Ages. … The subject of the book is very much in the news at the moment - will we be wiped out by climate change, war or pestilence? Hanlon is saying something different, that the species will survive as the planet changes around us. This different point of view is refreshing, and some sections of the book are very controversial, which should get the attention of the media. Not only is humankind not doomed, but that we may be around for millions, if not hundreds of millions of years. We have already survived one of the most extraordinary planet-wide catastrophes - the great Ice Ages. Equipped with the simplest technology, Homo sapiens sailed through the great glaciations, and profited from them.
Except that the “news at the moment” isn’t simply “will we be wiped out by climate change, war or pestilence.” It is do we want to survive in such a world and what can we do to avoid these things?
There are a myriad of reasons I hope you don’t vote National this Saturday, such as their record on selling off the country or their keenness to send Kiwi kids off to get killed in illegal wars to curry favour, but if there’s just one reason it’s this: our democracy.
National wants to take away one of the things I’m most proud of about our country, our proportional electoral system, MMP.
“Representative democracy,” to my eyes, is a contradiction in terms and one day I hope we put this little stepping stone behind us and move onto the greener pastures of participatory democracy, but in the mean time a representative one is what we have and the move to MMP has made it enormously more effective as a democracy and given many more people a rightful say in the running of the country.
It’s something to be proud of and something I’ve really missed while living here in Britain. I have no doubt that if Britain and the U.S. had proportional voting systems, such as MMP, the Bush/Blair gang would never have been able to launch a war of aggression—the “supreme war crime“—against Iraq. And they may even have avoided the deregulation that led to the credit crunch.
If National gets their way we’ll go back to an undemocratic system where people who manage to gain power in parties like Labour and National can impose their narrow agendas on the rest of us at our expense. All the other really important things such as the economy, the environment and peace will cease to be matters up for debate. This is why the matter of democracy is so important.
You know what to do. Keep New Zealand democracy safe on Saturday, vote for somebody else.
I harbour no illusions about the empty slogan “change we can believe in” but I can’t help feel a huge sense of relief that the right-wing (Democrats) of the Business Party have seized control off the far-right zealots (Republicans), in all three branches of U.S. government.
If you define democracy to be government by the people then the most generous thing you can say about the U.S., after two centuries, is that it is still a fledgling democracy. Even with a record turnout the Democrats and Obama were elected, roughly, with only 34% support of eligible voters.1 And this in a so-called representative democracy. It’s all light years away from participatory democracy, probably the only form of democracy truly worthy of the name.
There is no mass movement in the U.S. to push Obama and the Democrats for real social and economic change. The U.S. is still largely a country of the reactionaries controlled by fear, ignorance and big business propaganda. Garbage in, garbage out.
The biggest loser on the day: racism.
The biggest winner: Obama’s daughters, Sasha and Malia, who have been promised a puppy.
Update: Many reports describe the 65% turnout figure as that of “registered voters,” so the percentage of eligible voters in support of the Dems and Obama would be even less than 34%. I’ll post concrete numbers when I find them.
Notes:
Based on a pitiful but record turnout of 65% of eligible voters and a popular vote of 52% in favour of the Democrats and Obama. [↩]
Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, a woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or ‘disappeared’ at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame. — Amnesty International, 1996
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