All man's providers
Good God and the garden bean
Lowly, evergreen
The child complains till it gets its wayA very common thing for us to see todayA peaceful protest isn't something that existsA protest is something that violently persistsUntil adults take action, and put it all awaySome involved will not again see the light of day;Everyone wants to think he will live like a kingNo scrubby grass, for each hand a diamond ringPalaces for everyone, no spot of weathered paintClothes breathing perfectly, never make you faintThey saw a photograph, it was probably touched-upIn an advertisement, they're paid to drink the cupBut everything they touch is discolored like the poxNot uncommon for the human coming right out of the box--If it falls to dust, someone will have to take the blameExcept when no one's left, and these places have a nameA sovereignty is where you step up and you pay,But the child complains until it gets its way.
Democracy is the Problem
I've written this before, and I'll write it again. Democracy is the problem. While there are a number of ways to explain the problem of democracy, and obviously at this point reams have been writtten on the topic, it's worth getting a quick and fresh perspective, so some context can be had for understanding what comes next.
If you can't read what follows for some reason, I can encapsulate it into a simple idea: it only matters who rules you, governance structures matter inasmuch as they determine who rules you. Democracy means the majority cannot be ruled in their own interest, but in the interest of those who have the power to manipulate them.
Some of this has been covered in Popular Government, but when we look at democracy as a system for selecting who rules you (which is what it is--) we find that rather than people choosing in their own interest, their interests conflict on most issues and they are not of one mind about the common good. Any household can experience this, and there is almost no rule that guarantees agreement; people of the same class will not agree with one another (Sorry Marx) people of the same race (Sorry Adolf) and even people who vote for the same party will not.
Therefore, we have to conclude that the choices being made by most voting bodies, especially those of a certain size, are not at all determined by a collective will bending towards a common good. They are in fact determined by other things, and most of these things involve the action of more powerful people within the society manipulating public opinion, or as a general rule, manipulating procedural outcomes.
This accords with experience, in that most of us understand that even as voting cannot establish the truth, voting among a small group of like-minded people does have a certain force and a common expression of will, but beyond a certain number (20 they say is the limit at which the will of the council becomes invisible, essentially) voting acts more as a rubber stamp for more powerful wills within the whole.
These wills can be concealed, and their concealment depends on the belief in the common will, because it is this belief permits one to think that these powerful wills are accidental, rather than essential, to a larger voting body.
As such, because of the difference in class developed by difference in social power and role, so the wills manipulating the crowd will have different interests. They therefore guarantee that the 'who' in the 'who rules whom' equation will be hostile; the reason has two parts to it. The first is the difference in interests, which although distinct within the same nation must still by nature be connected, and the second is the irresponsible nature of manipulating a crowd; it is by nature an escape from responsibility towards the crowd, and therefore it cannot be, by its nature, made responsible for their well-being.
If the crowd were a formal army, there would be a chain of command and the crowd would know who its leaders were and could make demands directly of them; indeed, there would be some relationship between the two and pressure would exist for the leaders to be responsible to the crowd and consider its interests. The 'wire puller' however, has no unique relationship to any crowd in particular; to him they are mercenaries that he does not have to pay. They are interchangeable warm bodies.
Yet because he, or those who manipulate him, controls the crowd and therefore controls the selection of leadership, a contrary result occurs. Now, those who manipulate the crowd must additionally become afraid that the crowd, not being complete marks, will discover they are being sold a bill of goods and vote for some outsider who will throw their unstable and informal system of domination into mayhem. This isn't a common occurrence, but it is fatal.
From this, they must find a way to restructure government so that not only does the crowd believe they still have power, but they in fact, in voting, have as little power as possible. By moving decision-making from elected officials, whether formally or informally through social pressure and money, to permanent government ministers, they can effect this.
While this would seem at first glance a positive development, and certainly anyone who wished to effect it would need broad popular support, it continues the fundamental manipulative antagonism between the people and the 'wire pullers', while also removing the possible safety valve in the case of ruling-class insanity that an occasional up-and-down plebiscite affords.
In short, democracy, as a structure or theory of government, produces rulers who are antagonistic. It is its nature to produce irresponsibility, and often 'more' democracy produces even more wire-pulling and more antagonism. In fact, in much democratic thinking, the idea that those who rule are even rulers is unthinkable. It therefore in addition produces an antagonism between the ruled and the ruler as well; this problem not only includes the rightful disdain towards manipulators, but also a misdirected lack of gravity towards elected officials.
To the point about who rules you mattering more than systems or principles of rule, if you are honest with yourself, you will find most people's objections to certain policies or actions are rooted more in who is doing them, than what is being done. Sometimes this isn't obvious, because a shared set of expectations are involved, but when we see armed protestors, we assume they will be violent, whereas when we see armed homeowners, we assume they will be peaceful unless provoked. We have reasoning for this, but much of it is rationalization; we instinctively know that protestors are not our friends, and so them being armed is a threat to us, whereas homeowners, even if not our friends, are not our enemies, and so their being armed is not. In both cases, the same basic rights are in play - to bear arms. We know however that one we can trust with a gun, the other we cannot.
Therefore the core of the political for the common person is this: does he who rules me have my best interests in mind? To the thinker, this adds one layer, and that is, does the structure of government aid or harm in the process of ensuring rulers have our best interests in mind?
And this is just the tip of the iceberg as to why Democracy ensures none of those things.