I wrote this draft on Sept. 18, at, by the original time stamp, 2:17 pm, but didn't finish it.
Democracy collapses process, result and legitimation. Voting is the process, the result is the winner of the voting and the winner is legitimate as a result of the process. The Anglo-American jury system is does the same. The defendant gets "due process" and after that justice, the result, is what the jury says it is. I don't know of any other philosophy of government or jurisprudence that masters this trick. Democracy and Anglo-American jurisprudence are process uber alles. The vulnerabilities of such systems are stark and apparent. A non-democrat can get elected. Democratic theory has no answer for this existential flaw. Process can be corrupted: by outside influences, disinformation, voter ignorance, or vote buying; jurors can lie about bias. Both democracy and the jury system put total faith in the people. It is odd that this should be true, for Americans have no experience with democracy or the law except in the voting booth or jury room. Families are not run democratically, nor are their workplaces. To attack process is to attack the other two. Then the whole system is thrown into crisis.
"A legitimation
crisis is an identity crisis that results from a loss of confidence in
administrative institutions, which occurs despite the fact that they
still retain legal authority by which to govern."--Jürgen Habermas, 1973.
Democracy and rule of law in America are in a legitimation crisis. In this post I dilate on one of the procedural vulnerabilities of democratic process, gerrymandering, that produces a legitimation crisis
republican form of government
Their greatest consideration, in districts drawn to ensure that Democrats have little chance of winning, is how their decisions will play in hyper-partisan Republican primaries.
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I have read The Metaphysical Club so many times, and so intently, and read intently parts of it so many more, that my copy is literally coming apart at the seams and is underlined and parenthesized and margin-noted ridiculously, including those last two pages. In my mind, but I'm old, I did not get my oft-written view of the uniqueness of democracy and its collapse of means and ends, from Louis Menand. But I'm old.
In my mind, the great change in the soul of America, occurred with 9/11. My confidence level in that was "probable". The Metaphysical Club was published in 2001 and written before. Menand could not have dated the change from 9/11; he dates it from the end of the Cold War, circa 1989. The End of History, Fukuyama, 1989. Makes sense; it makes more sense to me now than does 9/11--but I may change my mind by the time I'm done with this post! The Manichean world of the Cold War did end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Political compromise, when not ordered around the good-versus-evil of the superpower confrontation, would have ended circa 1989 also. In fact,
As House Speaker, [Newt] Gingrich oversaw passage by the House of welfare reform and a capital gains tax cut in 1997. Gingrich played a key role in several government shutdowns, and impeached President Bill Clinton [1998] on a party-line vote in the House...Political scientists have credited Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States and hastening political polarization and partisanship.[6][7][8][9][10][page needed]
We needed a new Manicheanism with the demise of the Evil Empire. The Right found it in Democrats.
...
University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason identified Gingrich's instructions to Republicans to use words such as “betray, bizarre, decay, destroy, devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, and traitors” about Democrats as an example of a breach in social norms and exacerbation of partisan prejudice.[6]
Game, set, match for Louis Menand. Well...Joe McCarthy 1950-54! Yeah, McCarthy,
...made additional accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S. Truman, the Voice of America, and the U.S. Army.... used various charges of communism, communist sympathies, disloyalty, or sex crimes to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government.[10]
And that was at the highty-height of the Cold War. We weren't compromising politically during the Cold War and then stopped in 1989. Democrats, though, were twinned with communists in both the '50's and '90's. And since 2016.
There is, however, something since 2016 that is different from those prior demonizing times. Instead of Democrats it is democracy that is being attacked. Jamelle Bouie's column is on the anti-democracy currently going on in Wisconsin. Gerrymandering and the Right's attacks on the Wisconsin Supreme Court endangers the entire state as being unconstitutional for not having "a republican form of government". The little blurb beneath the link to Bouie's column above is from the Texas Tribune on that state. Gerrymandering is as American as apple pie but you can't deny a state's voters the right to vote or their right to a republican form of government.
And since 2016, the Right cannot lose an election. Any elections they are deemed to have lost are ipso facto illegitimate. That is, I believe, new. I don't remember McCarthy or Gingrich or any other generation's proto-fascists contending that Truman or Clinton were illegitimate for vote fraud. Legitimacy: I have read Legitimation Crisis. That book was not by Louis Menand. But still, this, from Menand in the Metaphysical Club, complete with my underlining, circling, bracketing and starring--it is only reasonable that The Metaphysical Club was more formative in the development of my ideas than I remembered:
Here, the problem to tradition is underlined in black pencil; the problem of legitimacy is circled in black ink; the text from the problem to tradition is right margined in a black bracket arc with a black *; But in societies to legitimate? is blue underlined. The difference is styluses indicating separate readings.
Since the defining characteristic of modern life is social change--the problem of legitimacy continually arises. In a premodern society, legitimacy rests with hereditary authority and tradition;...But in societies ben on transforming the past...how do we trust the claim that a particular state of affairs is legitimate?
The passage below is all underlined in blue ink and bracketed in a blue arc with "Bullshit" written in blue in the left margin; there is an arrow in black ink from the word premises to the page top margin with "Or Results!" written in black; a black arrow from procedures to top margin "HHH on Dukakis".
The solution has been to shift the totem of legitimacy from premises to procedures. We know an outcome is right not because it was derived from immutable principles, but because it was reached by following the correct procedures. [Picture a blue ink bracketing arc over all in left margin, "Bullshit"]
...whatever [black circled] followed from the pursuit of scientific methods [black underlining]...If those methods were scientific, the result must be science. The modern conception of law is similar: if the legal process was adhered to, the outcome is just. Justice does not preexist the case at hand; justice is whatever result just procedures have led to. [blue underlined]
Holmes believed that political opinion should be protected because this (the only way) for democratic governments to maintain legitimacy.
...Holmes...believe[d] that...Democracy is an experiment, and it is in the nature of experiments sometimes to fail. He had seen it fail once. [blue underlined] [Holmes to will, black-bracketed with arc in right margin with black check mark]
As I wrote in the original draft, democratic theory collapses process, result, and legitimation. That is not triply strong; it is triply vulnerable. Democratic process has been under attack since 2016, that is new, the other two are attacked with it as triplets. It wasn't 1989 or 9/11, it was the Catastrophe, 11/8/16 that marks the change in the soul of America.
