Democracy is not under threat. It is the threat.
Adding "Democratic" to your name usually means you’re anything but.
Take the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea, the Democratic Republic of (East) Germany, and the Democratic Party, for example.
The party of democrats who don’t want you to vote, liberals with a taste for censorship, and free thinkers who toe the party line.
What they call "democracy" happens to be just that: the party line.
A word to sum up their pet projects: abortion, open borders, compelled speech (political correctness), and social experimentation (Critical Race Theory - CRT, Diversity Equity and Inclusion - DEI).
A totalitarian ideal they genuinely believe in.
Liberal totalitarianism is seductively sophisticated, with promises of instant gratification broadcast non-stop through media and academia. It’s to the point where forming a valid opinion on our own no longer feels necessary.
Come election time, the machine goes into overdrive, repeating "democracy is at stake."
But what they mean is their agenda is at stake. Not your ability to vote, choose your representatives, and have your voice heard in a proportional manner.
No, that’s the commoner’s democracy.
That’s the threat.
It was never about everyone getting a participation trophy; it was always about the elites choosing the winners. Still, they realize that just as cookies are good, but sometimes we get ants; democracy is good, but sometimes we get conservatives.
Their solution?
A Pyrrhic democracy where winning means losing because you are always undermined by the deep state.
First, policies are outsourced to multilateral organizations and executed by government-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations.
Then it’s a numbers game: rig the civil service, pack the courts, and ramp up immigration in time for the next redistricting.
All that might not be enough to protect democracy because, as Vladimir (Ilyich Ulyanov) Lenin says, more important than the people who cast the votes, are the people who count the votes.
You need to deal with election processes: ballot-harvesting, mail-in votes, voting machines. No ID required because, again, who’s voting isn’t exactly important.
When all else fails, it’s time to thin the herd on the ballot. To preserve democracy, sometimes you need to keep public choice narrow, guiding the clueless masses toward an "acceptable" outcome.
You don’t end up in a regime that persecutes, disqualifies, and imprisons the opposition by accident, or by the hands of a few rogue actors.
As Georges Bernanos said, democracy is not the opposite of dictatorship, and sometimes it leads to it. You don’t just sleepwalk into it, you need to be very woke to get there — to campaign for it, vote for it, and pay for it.
Safeguarding this democracy means no questions, no scrutiny.
Protecting it from itself, and then from the people.
The New York Times said it clearly, in a rare slip of honesty: "Elections Are Bad for Democracy."
They later backtracked, changing the headline to: "The Worst People Run for Office. It’s Time for a Better Way."
It only made their message clearer.
They believe the democratic wherewithal of the elites should allow them to prevent certain people from running for office, all in the name of social justice.
Far from being an anomaly, the American democratic crackdown on the opposition seems very much on brand, when you look around the world.
In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has been declared ineligible by the courts, as has Maria Corina Machado in Venezuela. Meanwhile, the German government seeks to ban the populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and in Poland, recently elected globalist Donald Tusk is throwing dissidents in jail.
It doesn’t happen overnight.
Step by step, they have normalized every trick in the book to convince their cohorts that suppressing scrutiny and eliminating the opposition is, in fact, the way forward for progressive democracy.
That's the "better way" The New York Times heralded: a directed democracy with no people’s input required. The rule of a uniparty, promising half-full glasses for everyone, but delivering a few of them overflowing — and a few empty ones.
In 2024, it’s not just about the people regaining power. It’s about reclaiming the meaning of democracy: not a program for the elites, but the rule of the people against the aristocracy. As it always has been.
So when they cry that "democracy" is under threat, is because they understand that democracy is the threat.
Cauf Skiviers writes about philosophy, economics, politics, and things that lie between the inconceivable and the undesirable. His reports also appear at: https://cauf.substack.com. Read more of Cauf Skiviers' reports here.