Democracy was never about ‘the people’. Ever. It always was feudalism with checks and balances installed to…

Democracy was never about ‘the people’. Ever. It always was feudalism with checks and balances installed to limit the power of the King. We then began calling those checks and balances ‘democracy’. This is basic history, have a look. /1 https://t.co/q60Ulono64

Those checks and balances were about buttressing the power of the royal court. Of the ‘aristocracy’, as we’d call it today. All societies are run by status. Status itself is run by the highest status people and groups. Kings and barons, and modern equivalents. /2

Centuries down the track those checks and balances on royal power are so far removed from modern historical memory that we’ve simply forgotten what they are and where they came from. ‘Democracy’ always was just putting limits on the powers of the King. /3

It’s a fight at the top end of societies, at the tip of status hierarchies. Because the rest of society works for that top end, the victories for either side of that battle will impact the rest of us, in good and bad ways. So we think this must be a ‘people’ centred thing. /4

That’s a fundamental, catastrophic error. The people (whatever that means, there is no such homogeneous group) benefit from the checks and balances only insofar as the barons they work for benefit from them. What if the barons and the King get chummy? /5

Welcome to 2025. Where our modern barons, our corporate titans and influencers, schmooze with the Kings of the day (Prime Ministers, Presidents, or actual kings). No need for those pesky checks and balances when schmoozing is the order of the day. Thus their collapse. /6

Fuck ‘the people’ now. No noblesse oblige operates in modern corporate aristocracies. They’d just as soon replace you with AI and robots. So ‘democracy’ is dying, everywhere. It has been for decades, we just ignore it. And not because of ‘authoritarian’ takeovers. /7

All societies are ‘authoritarian’, in the idiot way we use that word. Because they all run on status, and status is hierarchical, with a King or equivalent right at the top. Democracy is just when the barons and the King are at war with each other. /8

That is literally all it ever was. Throw in some catastrophic disruptions like world wars and plagues and economic depressions, smashing status hierarchies in the 20th century in particular, and you can feel like ‘democracy’ was in the ascendancy. ‘People power’ at last! /9

Utterly delusional. Not just because it’s not what actually happened, but because it could never happen anyway. ‘Popular sovereignty’ is an oxymoron. Governance bootstrapping. ‘The people’ will always do what all people always do. Fight for status. /10

Just like their barons and Kings. They join teams, headed by their higher status leaders in every field of life, and battle other teams, for supremacy. Imitating one another, to create team cohesion and strength. Why Girard called the basis of society ‘imitative rivalry’. /11

Another day of dreary scrolling through more of these status team sports, accusations of ‘authoritarianism’ and “No Kings” protests. That last one is funny. Like the US ever gave up Kings. The US President is the most royal figure in the world, and has been for decades. /end