22 November

Everything we mythologise as ‘democracy’ actually had its origins in battles between the highest status members of a society. Take the idea of a ‘fair trial’, or procedural fairness more generally. That had nothing to do with ‘the people’ at all, it was the outcome of brutal and bloody battles between Kings and their nobles, the nobles wanting limits placed on the King’s power. If the King tried to harm them, they insisted on a ‘fair trial’. Democracy is not for or done by ‘the people’. There’s no such thing as the people, it’s a fiction. All societies are full of status hierarchies of various forms, they’re not some amorphous mass called ‘the people’. Democracy is the managed rivalry of its highest status members. Trump for example isn’t doing an ‘authoritarian’ takeover of democracy. America just has unmanaged rivalries between its highest status people. He’s not being reined in by others of high status, mostly (for now) because they’re doing very well out of him. That will shift though, it always does.