What passes for intellectual competence.

The Atlantic

The Reason Putin Would Risk War.

He is threatening to invade Ukraine because he want democracy to fail -- and not just in that country. ~ Anne Applebaum.^[1]

Wasn't the objective of the 2014 U.S. regime change operation in Ukraine designed to remove the elected president of the country? I mean, I'm just asking here. And I have it on good authority that it was the U.S. State Department that selected Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the next prime minister in early 2014. I seem to be missing the parts where these changes came about by means of anything faintly "democratic." And boy were we energized about removing Bashar al-Assad in Syria, whose people seem to vote for him as president with some regularity. But, right, Mr. Putin wants democracy to fail. Got it.

"Democracy" is one of those words or terms that have impereceptibly taken over political discourse like "gender," "impact," "choice," "women's health," "voter suppression," "privilege," "underprivileged," "underserved," "disadvantaged," "racism," "privacy," "affirmative action," "inner city," "central city," "youths," "baby mama," "poor schools," "food deserts," "gun violence," "rape culture," and "prison industrial complex." Of course, the U.S. is not a democracy but a constitutional republic whose avowed purpose is to secure the blessings of liberty, inter alia, by restricting federal powers vis-à-vis the states and dividing those powers between the three branches of government. The idea that we have supposedly become a democracy would have horrified the Founders, Ratifiers and citizens of that generation.

Liberty requires restraint on government excess but democracy bypasses that vital feature. Rather it is the citizen's sacred right to go through the futile motions of casting a ballot that makes leftists swoon. As Ben Bartee reports

Via empirical, quantitative research from Princeton researchers:

“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”^[2]

So lifting up voting as the crowning glory of our system is a bit much. Not to mention Pelosi weeping crocodile tears about "the temple of our democracy" while living in a deep snooze about the disgraceful abuse of the 1/6 "insurrectionists" and the summary execution of Ashley Babbitt. But it is clear, isn't it, that the payoff for this linguistic distortion is that the erosion of our liberty disappears from public perception?

Come to think of it, I want democracy to fail too, but serious failure is in the works as we speak anyway, so what I think about that is beside the point. Do let it be noted, however, that supposed serious people are utterly clueless about the essentials of our system, such as it was. It ended up that very smart people were too clever by half and contributed nothing more than your average drug-addicted street person.

Notes
^[1] Quoted in "Direct From Average Ukrainians in War Crosshairs: ‘The US Needs This War, Not Us’." By Ben Bartee, ZeroHedge, 2/23/22.
^[2] Bartee, supra.