Many of us lionized that idealistic land of the free, that cavernous conglomerate of cultures, the American continent whose history had seemingly reached its telos. Democracy there had secured justice for the most vulnerable, unlike the militaristic and nationalistic undercurrents perceptible in almost every developing society. The rigidity and inflexibility of thought permeating the primitive values of the worshipful masses underscored the relevant obsequiousness and brainlessness with which the herds placed their terracotta emperors upon pedestals of bones.
This incendiary vision of the land of milk and honey is not quite what it used to be. Once it was beguilingly simple to point to America as vindication of democracy's virtues, but that old trick is less punchy than before. Perhaps it's just that idealistic teenagers like me turn into cynical adults; perhaps the quality of the Bush government represents a genuine decline. But everywhere in the West, the withered face of democracy seems to be less and less that wondrous vision of men and women choosing and shaping their own destiny, and instead a farce of polemics, deception, voter anencephaly, self-oppression and - that dirtiest word of all - populism.
My cynicism begins with mini-democracy at Princeton - elections for Social Chair, College Representatives, doormat and so on. Under inane slogans like "It's Easy - Choose JC" and menial affirmations of free food and T-shirts, the orgy of self-promotion becomes an irresponsible game of pandering under snappy catchphrases that signify style and solidarity without any content. Extend this infantile manifestation of collegiate demagoguery to this year's elections and not much has changed: Far from being rational citizens of political theory, Princeton students who have never been out of the country, whose friends have always been white and heterosexual and who fear godlessness everywhere vote under ragtag, meaningless one-liners such as "loves God and Country," "not a socialist" and "because my parents said so."
Clearly, people power lies quivering in its own populist penumbra. Western democracy has finally traced the pattern of its final dress: a vulgar ball gown that takes the winner of "American Idol" from homecoming queen to stalwart of the Oval Office. One size fits all, whether Joe Six-pack American or Harvard Summa Cum Laude, and "as empty vessels make the loudest sound" etc. Fifty years ago the Chinese Communists sent the intellectuals and scholarly elite to the factories, fields and gallows by order of the proletariat; today Americans seem to champion the same cause. The disenfranchised continue their self-immolation at the altar of phantasmagoric piety by persecuting that new pariah, the "educated elite," clamoring instead for that delusive sage-king in the mirror. (A king without those fancy clothes and qualifications who pretends that the serfs who samba in the streets aren't actually naked).
Freedom of speech has become the refuge of a starkly anti-intellectual sentiment: If everyone's views are equally valid, why bother to say anything accurate or well-informed? Why listen to economic experts instead of Fingers McBlame? And what the heck is a constitution? Thus the marketplace of ideas devolves into insufferable playground discourse. And where the democratic process once seemed to march inexorably towards exponentially increasing enlightenment and liberty, today the regressive program of intolerance toward racial, sexual and spiritual minorities, xenophobia, rabid nationalism, Christian fundamentalism and imperialism is being consummated by political majoritarianism through referendum. Democracy, desquamated and infertile, sheds its instrumental purpose of securing social justice and civil liberties and becomes the 11th commandment in a dog-eared shopping list of must-haves, below guns and religion.
And as those who, like alcoholics and meth addicts, have literally no conception of their own best interests propel increasingly incompetent politicians to stardom, it is sufficient for authoritarian apologists to conclude that daddy needs to send democracy to rehab. Besides, those pillars of the Western world are no longer Romanesque but Fascist; the Pantheon suffocates with gargoyles. Those who, like me, wished to take home the democratic fruits of our American education have nothing to show for it.
Johann Loh is a senior in the philosophy department from Singapore. He can be reached at loh@princeton.edu.
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