Increasing one’s vocabulary is always a good thing. And I learned the word kakistocracy quite recently while reading Paul Krugman’s last column for the New York Times. It means government by the worst. In Krugman’s case he was being predictive. I think there’s a deeper way to think of the word: What do we mean by worst? There’s Mr. Maduro in Venezuela, Mr. Putin in Russia, Mr. Lukashenko in Belarus, The Ayatollah in Iran… There was Stalin, Saddam Hussain and Bashir Al-Assad. The list could go on of course. The point is what is worst, what is worst to us, what is worst for the society we live in? Kakistocracy is a word that may have its own meaning but which is also going to mean what we want it to mean, and that is why we need to give it thought. I know I’m being philosophical, intentionally I might add. And perhaps that is because I do believe it is usually a good idea to be prepared for the worst.
Danielle Levy
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Yes, Democracy Is Messy
It’s easy to say Democracy is messy, but what do we mean? I can only speak for my understanding as to why. Citizens are like the pieces of a mosaic, all equal but not all the same. We each have one vote, but the ignorant has the same vote as the learned, the one with full information has the same vote as the one with little information, the one with understanding as the one with little or none, the one who sees more clearly with the one who does not. Do I want to change this equality? Not in the least, changing it would mean we would harm democracy. But I would like to change the conditions under which we practice this democracy. I would want to create conditions and opportunities for the knowledge discrepancies which underlie our messiness to be reduced. As an example, take the word democracy, what does it mean, what does it stand for, what does it entail? What are its limits? What are the conditions under which it only looks like democracy but is no longer? While knowledge is key, so are its corollaries of facts, truth and what’s real. But we now live in societies where the real and the unreal are not always distinguishable, and that is a huge obstacle which needs to be addressed and confronted. There’s certainly no magic bullet for all this, yet our educational system and our media do have roles to play. I’m not suggesting conditions which would even out our individual differences, we are each and all, for instance, entitled to whatever intelligence we possess. But I have two suggestions, one to recognize that this underlying cause of democracy’s messiness comes with the territory, and two that we agree to make it more manageable. Then I think how might more easily surface.