Ever since the Greeks effectively invented the model of democracy 2400 years ago, thinkers since Plato have raised concerns about its viability in the face of the demands of the majority and the risks of the ideal model being flipped into its nemesis: mob rule. The rampage in the Capitol on January 6 brought this tension into focus. The challenge of the next generation is to staunch this crisis, but not merely in terms of its acute convulsions and the demands of those whose inability to tolerate change and loss of power. The rule of law and the re-shaping of democratic forms of government are essential, but insufficient.
 
Constructing a robust democratic culture means wrestling with the problems raised by the nature of modern society; not least of which is technology, not only in terms of media and communications, but, more fundamentally, in terms of education and opportunity. In order to understand this, we need to dig into the premises of democracy—particularly liberal democracy—in the modern world.
 
Prior to the American and French Revolutions in the late 18C, there was little idea that the masses of people should be in charge. The complexities of state were best left to those with the time and brains (breeding/blood lines?!) to handle them. In a world where basic literacy, much less awareness of public issues was low; this was hard to argue with as a practical matter.
 
Modern representative democracy has always been aspirational; that is, its theory was well ahead of its practice. Ideas articulated in the American and French revolutions (“We the people”, “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality”) were immediately tempered by the well-known constraints built into the US Constitution (separation of powers, “checks-and-balances”), the exclusion of women, slaves, native Americans, and most white men with little wealth. In France, the Great Revolution of 1789 led to eighty years of bouncing back-and-forth between regime structures, adding monarchy to the set of American problems. British structures also excluded women, most men (for economic reasons), as well as all the natives of the far-flung Empire who were subject to Parliament in London. Progress towards the ideal model of democracy was incremental across the 19C and much of the 20C, chipping away at formal and practical impediments.
 
The essential premise of democracy is that people know enough to exercise sensible judgment about the issues of governance. This shows up in the millennia-long fear of mobocracy whose passions overrun reason. The modern response to this problem was built first on the idea of representative democracy, under which “leading men” chosen by the populace, would deliberate on the issues. The rise of public education in the late 19C was a further answer to this: a hope that “ordinary” folks could be educated to participate sensibly in the democratic process.
 
So far so good, at least in those countries with the social cohesion and wealth to accomplish it (notwithstanding their inbred aristo/oligarchic distortions).  Parachuting democracy into societies lacking that cohesion (Central Europe following WWI, the decolonized empires following WWII) almost always went awry, usually producing regimes that were adept only at the forms and nomenclature (e.g., the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”). Outside of the “West” (Europe, the former British white-run dominions, Japan), democratic success was rare (India?), even against a standard that disregarded the racial and gender short-comings of the nominal exemplars.
 
The rise of modern democracy was coincident with the rise of the “middle class,” itself the product of education and the shift in labor markets to produce enough wealth, leisure, and “stake in the system” to give these “middling sorts” a sense of self-confidence, social prominence, and economic clout sufficient to ameliorate the remaining embedded power of traditional elites and the latter’s concerns about the relinquishing of domination.
 
The opportunity to join the “middle class” (aka the “American Dream”) was sufficient, too, to secure the buy-in of those whose current circumstances were inadequate; built on the intertwined strands of education and economic improvement.
 
The late 20C shift to a post-industrial economy and increasing inequality threatens all this. Not only are “middling” jobs evaporating, but education-based opportunity is thereby left with 1) few targets of opportunity, 2) reduced resources to support educational infrastructure, and 3) the expansion of those included in the rising group who lack either the family, social, or early-educational support to perform at the level formerly expected by those in the higher educational levels. On top of this, our culture promotes college education predominantly as a pre-vocational activity, diminishing attention paid to basic analytic and communications skills, as well as substantive knowledge of the nature of our democratic society.
 
Though itself a product of these broad socio-economic forces, the crisis in education puts the entire theory of democracy at risk. But resolving the educational crisis would only expose an underlying problem: democracy requires not only capability (educated citizens able to understand issues and interests), but also motivation.
 
Most people have limited perspectives on life or have little interest in spending time on public issues. Education would not turn us all into noble sages; nor would some miraculous techno-economic revolution in which everyone becomes a member of the leisure. Modern complexity, bureaucracy, and alienation are large deterrents. Yet we are all entitled, under democratic theory, to participate. Again, representative democracy provides some solution, at least to the problem of governance. But as to the problem of culture and participation, big gaps remain and no good solutions are in sight. Mandatory voting produces participation, but not necessarily informed participation.
 
A bit over one hundred years ago, Vladimir Lenin said:
 
“If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.”
 
His answer, of course, was to assert that he and other leading thinkers had to assume control of Russia in the name of the people and Socialism: An all-powerful elite, the withering-away of the state, the (eventual) triumph of the masses. We all know how that turned out.
 
My own approach is to teach; to help students/citizens to participate more effectively: to understand and communicate their interests and beliefs, to assess the arguments of others (ideological diversity being inevitable), to resolve differences through discussion and negotiation and to awaken a sense of stake and interest in the process and outcomes for themselves, their communities, and society as a whole.
 
Others work to awaken citizens to their rights to vote.  Others work on specific issues. What is clear is that personal participation is not enough. We have to take some responsibility and action in support of wider engagement. The fundamental premise of democracy is community, a shared commitment to each other to work out our differences and deal with the evolving world. To whatever degree you were appalled by the scene at the Capitol three weeks ago and the precarious state of our body politic up to then, you can see that sending in your ballot every two/four years is not enough and will be cold comfort if the next crisis turns out worse. This is not a partisan issue. The Democratic majority in Congress is precarious and, as I have noted elsewhere, is hardly a panacea to our broad range of social ills.
 
The Constitution starts with “We the people”; there’s no one else to do it.
 

There was a time when the Soviet Union was a leading beacon of progress for the world. In 1919, Lincoln Steffens, an American journalist visited the new revolutionary state and proclaimed “I have seen the future and it works!” By the 1930s, with the “liberal” West in the convulsions and dreariness of the Great Depression, the Soviet Union was again held out as a model for the world. Since it had been economically isolated in retaliation for the Bolshevik revolution, the USSR had little choice but to go it alone. It was also a pioneer in state-directed economic management driving the most rapid modern industrialization program in history. As a result its relative economic success in the 1930s (the foundation for its strength against the Nazis in the 1940s), made it a formidable role model across the world in the 1950s and ‘60s.

We know now that this leap forward was to collapse a few decades later. We have known for some time (although not then) the brutal costs paid by the peoples of the USSR for this over-centralization of power.

My topic today, however, is not the Soviet system’s successes or failures. Rather, I want to highlight the precariousness of the current American image in the world.

While the US was eventually dominant in the global cultural cold war of the 20C, the competition between the US and China in the 21C could well come out differently. The smugness of the ‘90s about the triumphalism of the modern/liberal/Western/capitalist approach to the world was severely punctured on 9/11. Still, the absence, until recently, of any viable competitor has made it easy for Americans to pretend that our exceptionalism was unique/inevitable/eternal and to dismiss the Chinese as parvenus, whose dictatorial tendencies and inscrutable language made them—at most—problematic.

The expectation that China will overtake the US in terms of GDP in the next decade and the emergence of China as an active wielder of the world’s second most powerful military will affect our broad understanding of the two countries’ relationship. But these phenomena will not be tangible to most folks whether Chinese, American, or otherwise.

Instead, the two biggest developments of the last 12 months have the potential to shift the global perceptions of these two giants. China has successfully managed the outbreak of the Coronavirus and the US has been incompetent. Both in terms of culture and governmental power, China has got the pandemic under control and those who challenge its success on the ground of the surrender or suppression of individual liberty must get past a tall list of deaths, disabilities, disease, and economic pain at both the macro and micro levels as an “acceptable” cost for political “freedom” and cultural individualism.

The insurrectionist spasm at the Capitol on January 6 could profoundly undercut the US as a role model for the rest of the world. As one Columbian newspaper asked: “Who’s the banana republic now?” There are many reasons (economic inequality, racial treatment, hyper-active military) why the US’ global image has plausibly suffered of late, but Confederate flags in the halls of Congress make it difficult for us to claim to be the “shining city on a hill” of our national mythology. Even if Trump is an aberration as a person, the endorsement of over a quarter of Congress undermines our desperate claims that “this is not who we are.” To the extent we have been successful in promoting democracy on a global basis, there are many countries who manage better-run (and more-widely accepted) electoral systems than we operate. [What would it mean for Rudy Giuliani to be as passionate about real voter suppression as he has been about his fantasies?]

China recognizes and is taking advantage of this, as they have generally, as Trumpian withdrawal of American presence and influence across the world has created opportunities for the opportunistic and ambitious Chinese. They are often clumsy and prone to repeat the arrogance of American power in countries around the world, but they are also sufficiently savvy to repress freedoms in Hong Kong and across China itself just when the US is hobbled from its usual finger-pointing about the global preservation of democracy.

Beyond the fact that the “leader of the free world” is MIA when it comes to freedom, our sorry performance in pandemic management undermines our claim to technocratic and moral leadership. While our science has performed miracles, our social fabric has unraveled. At a global level, this is evident in our refusal to join the world-wide vaccine alliance.

Global public opinion is no longer limited to gentlemen who can decipher the discreet implications of the Times (of London). The social and traditional media of the 21C ensure that ordinary people around the world will see these pictures and words and have some sense of our fumbling pandemic management. What happens in the US is still far more likely to show up on the news everywhere just because we are the center of the media universe. The pictures and numbers of the impact of the pandemic are all the more startling to those who expected that, if we were going to hoard our resources in order to take care of our own, we would at least do a better job of it.

PR matters. Soft power matters. Geopolitics is not just about the range and sophistication of drones  and the number of “feet-on-the-ground.” Regardless of bragging rights, there is something in the argument that it is in the American national interest to have friends overseas (lots of them!). There is something in the argument that we have something important to offer to others to see our example (positive and negative).

Our self-inflicted wounds will require considerable attention if we are to heal for our own benefit. They will require more and attention if we are to resume the effort to show other countries “how its done.”

It might be that China’s pandemic-management success is an echo of the Soviet’s industrialization and growth of the 1920s and ‘30s and that the underlying hollowness of an unconstrained bureaucratic system will, in due time, become clear. Or, it might be that we will look back on the US of 2020 and say: “I have seen the past, and it didn’t work.”