Is Democracy on the Decline

Ooh, can I play?

No, YOU’RE wrong again.

Your turn.

No one asked you Mr Formby.

Actually, you’re all wrong.

What you need to do is calm down with a nice bowl of brocolli and stilton soup with crusty bread.

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We definitely need a poll to decide who is more wrong than the other wrong dumbass. I haven’t really been following (I saw Barry Muslims and immigrants and for that reason was out) but If I had to put money on it I would say Barry is wrong. I could be wrong though.

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Shut up Cob. My rums have turned up and i’m prepared to get pissed if this goes the way it looks.

Diplomatico is nice Gb. Only had one, so i’m going to predict the next one tastes nicer :lou_lol:

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Fair do’s @saint-or-sinner Rum trumps soup any day.

Enjoy!

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RED!

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Soz, time delay due to having to log in twice. Took 18 hours this time. Developer needs to improve it.

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Just to check, do I have to wait 18 hours every time I want to reply to one of your posts?

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I will tell you early tomorrow morning.

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I’d personally be gutted if you were the same poster.

It’d remove mutual forum masturbation as an option.

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Errmmm, if you want one of us (both of us?) to wank you off surely you should ask us via PM rather than on an open thread. Bit embarrassing for everyone really.

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stop moaning & do it already I’m only here till 10am

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I’m not taking seasoned seconds, you salty handed bastard.

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Bump.

I’ve had some thoughts on this. I was going to start a new thread positing a different question, but it’ll work well enough here.

Recently, I’ve realised that my most trenchant political beliefs come from a respect for the central tenets of democracy. Brexit, freedom of speech, you name it. It all comes from the same place. The people should be able to decide what they say individually, without fear of sanction, and people should be able to collectively direct the nation, define what it is and what it does.

Thing is, democracy needs certain things in order to work. First and foremost, you need an informed citizenry. If you don’t have that, democracy doesn’t work, just as your common or garden middle manager cannot make educated decisions if he or she is not privy to all of the required information.

The problem is that those in charge do all they can to misinform, and it has been exacerbated by the fact that public citizens have access to more information than they’re giving out through alternative sources.

It has created competition for truth and a crisis of legitimacy. No-one knows what to believe, which is precisely why they end up believing people like Trump or the AfD. Politicians of that ilk speak simply, and prosper because they say the unsayable.

I’m not condoning them. I’m explaining them.

Trump talks a load of bollocks, but when he says that politicians have been a load of shit, it’s true.

When the AfD tell the German people that there are too many immigrants in Germany, they’re not only in total opposition to Merkel.

They’re capitalising on the on-the-ground experience of ordinary Germans, emasculated from such ideas for decades.

Next, you need everything on the table. Every time you take something off the menu, you diminish the power of the institution. You can vote on everything, but not on this.

Alright, for some situations, I totally understand this. Much as I might want to, I really shouldn’t be able to vote on where we deploy our submarines, etc.

Finally, you need a free press, able to report without fear of favour, and it needs to be mainstream.

I still maintain that democracy is the least worst system. It still powers most of my political convictions, and it is an entirely honourable concept in the abstract; something we should all subscribe to.

The decline, and there is one, is entirely down to democracy not having the ingredients to work. We need an informed citizenry, to have as many policy areas on the table as possible and a free mainstream press.

I think we lack all three.

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And, based on the polarisation of political beliefs just in the UK it’s patently clear politicians don’t believe in democracy just self interest expressed through the promotion of devisive issues dressed up as democracy…errrrrrm. and I’m back to Brexit, for example…

https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1088181274030727168

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Sad state of affairs when a councillor is shot down for pointing out a reality when it doesn’t fit opposition councillors’own narrative.

#dividedbritain

What about Yalta?
Obviously towards the end things changed but so did the politics, without the Empires resistance the war would have had a very different outcome, operation Barbarossa would have have happened sooner and the Germans would have galvanised Europe in resisting US land invasion.

Junior partner at the end? Maybe but not at the beginning, Britain right ro wrong sacrificed its Empire for final victory in World War II.

Now that is a narrative that can not be changed.

Britain and the Empire were alone in 1941, thats a fact.

But from my perspective we became a junior partner and I firmly believe that the UK would have been well and truly fucked if it wasn’t for the Yanks and Ruskies - which I don’t think from your post you disagree.

The point being that certain people, with a certain mindset still believe the opposite.