“In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns.” (Benjamin…

“In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns.” (Benjamin Franklin) This is the American political DNA. It’s also impossible nonsense, that is destroying the world. /1 https://t.co/HNkIagqwwE

‘Popular sovereignty’ is the system of government of modern democracies. A system of government where ‘the people’ are sovereign. The problem with that whole idea is that it’s both a logical and physical impossibility. /2

Groups of people, of whatever size, simply don’t, and can’t, think, act or feel as a single entity. And yet this is the nonsense we hear every day, as ‘democracy’. The idea that ‘the people’ has replaced the sovereign (King, or whatever), at the centre of societies. /3

It’s easy to understand how an actual sovereign can govern something. They give orders, which are then carried out. Cascade down through all the levels of society, and that basic ‘centralised’ direction is easily visible, in business, in any human organisation, in families. /4

But not anywhere will you find a group of people, whether the tiniest sporting club, or an organisation, or an entire nation, taking on that directing role. Because it can’t logically, or physically, be done. /5

Groups of people are not ‘of one mind’. They never, ever, simultaneously arrive at the same decision, or even think or feel the same things. You will always if you look find an origin for how groups of people seem to act. And it will always be led, by a tiny number of them. /6

Who others in the group then emulate/imitate. Not because the rest are stupid, but because seriously, how did we ever believe an entire group would simultaneously all become one deciding mind? We’ve all been in groups. We *know* that’s not how they work. /7

Even at school, when given a group assignment. We know that the group doesn’t all sit down and suddenly, like possessed savants, start automatically thinking and writing the same things. Somebody has an idea. Others mull it over, and accept it, or not. Or modify it. /8

Individually. The perversity of this libertarian political idea is that it worships the individual, and then enshrines a ludicrous model of group mesmerism as a governance model. All change is led. In all groups. There is no popular sovereignty. /9

Just look at what we call democracy. The only actual thing ‘the people’ do, is vote. That’s the only way anybody has any meaningful sense of what this supposed group is thinking and wants. The people they vote for then rule. But have no sovereignty. Oxymoronic. /10

Those who actually rule have no sovereignty, while those ruled do nothing, but have (supposedly) all the sovereignty. Who believes this nonsense? /11

‘But the people get to choose who lead, that’s their sovereignty.’ There’s almost a glimmer of logic there. Except, as above, the people isn’t a thing. Groups don’t think, feel and act. /12

What happens instead is what we’ve seen this past week. Whoever is most popular, wins. There’s no collective group activity here. Millions get behind their most popular candidate, who leads them, and whom they then emulate or imitate. /13

The whole thing is as intensely hierarchical or ‘top-down’ as the actual sovereign, monarchical model it supposedly replaced. That replacement was a con. Removing the King or equivalent left a void at the heart of societies, which now any grifter can fill. /14

I share this often, because it’s exactly what the Trumps of the world are doing, and why they win. They’re occupying the role of the sovereign which our claptrap about ‘the people’ makes perpetually vacant. Humans create status hierarchies. It’s what societies are. /15 https://t.co/tdudQum7UA

Not because we’re all sheep, but because a status hierarchy reflects that we can’t all do everything at once. We need expertise in all fields of life, to lead us. That expertise has status, in each field of life. Look around you, you’ll see it for everything. /16

Plumbing, cooking, dentistry, singing…whatever. All status hierarchies. Just as governance of an entire nation is. Our democracies are being destroyed by a type of Freudian hang-up the founders of the US had, about monarchs. /17

Stung by their exile from Europe, by monarchs, they were determined to never succumb to one again. But that’s led to the most obscene abomination. /18

The pretense that nobody is leading, that we’re all doing it. A DIY society! Like all of us doing our own plumbing, flying our own planes, doing our own root canal work. How do we not see this actually happening? Everybody now ‘doing their own research’? /19

And each of us now running the entire country! Again, who believes this rubbish? Sadly, most believe it. Meaning every tinpot Napoleon-wannabe is now free to lord over us, while claiming we’re actually in charge. /end