Jon Stewart Proves Democracies Are Undesirable

Regime court jester Jon Stewart used his stock “aghast” gimmick (which, you will know, is a low play on emotion) to instruct his audience that Biden’s senility was “new information” that was only now “introduced” and “just received by voters”. And that therefore the Democrats are in deep kimchi because of “threats to our democracy”.

We are not here interested in the left’s civil war. We are interested in propaganda and its effects on “our democracy”.

Stewart used the “new” bit twice, emphasizing it in a clever, offhand way. We can’t see the faces in his audience, but we can hear them. They are obedient as always, hooting and giggling because they have been flattered. Stewart allowed his listeners to convince themselves that, yes, indeed, this was new information, and that therefore (here comes the flattery) they were not responsible for doing anything about it.

Their reaction to this “new information” is a terrific argument against “our democracy.”

There is nothing new here. We have been speculating since Biden was fortified into office in 2020 when he would drop off the twig. I wrongly predicted he wouldn’t last out his term. Wrong, but not so far off either. Because Biden’s frailty four years ago was obvious. Now? Now the only way to not know about it is ignorance.

I mean ignorance in two senses. Firstly the obvious one, in which a person is uninformed. We’ve all seen (I’ve brought this up many times) those videos in which average voters are asked to name, say, any justice on the Supreme Court, or the Vice President or their Senator. Or which large country is directly north of the USA. Or to even name another foreign country. The obvious and important deduction from the answers is that these people should not be voting for matters in which they are ignorant, like the Presidency.

Secondly, the less obvious meaning of ignorance is in which a person is willingly misinformed, as at least some of those in Stewart’s audience were. I’m thinking of the people who had the evidence of their own eyes, and rejected it because they were told to by propagandists, and who are now asked to re-believe it, and do.

It is not necessarily a moral failing to be uninformed. After all, most of us know little, or nothing, of most things. But then we are not asked to do anything about most of these matters. Ignorance is only a failing if one is supposed to be informed, and isn’t yet could be. Or it is again when it is insisted another act as if he is informed, but isn’t or can’t be. It would, for instance, be an obvious absurdity to ask all adults to vote on the validity of string theory. But it’s not that much less absurd to allow a person who cannot name another country to vote for President.

The ignorant, in either group, are easily led, which is no secret to propagandists. Which, given the increasing matters on which we are asked to vote, explains why propaganda is our leading product. The presence of propagandists wouldn’t be that interesting, given the human propensity to misinform, except that because people are asked to vote, they are asked to be informed, too. Hence the “news” and NPR and clowns like Stewart.

There is no solution to this problem in a democracy, let alone an “our democracy”. Propaganda is as necessary to a democracy (or an “our democracy”) as water is to a duck. Democracy is the belief that the ignorant and addled should decide questions which they cannot possible understand. Which is why, of course, our Founders rejected democracy, and embraced republicanism, which is closely aligned with subsidiarity.

Subsidiarity, in brief, is the idea that matters should be resolved at the level at which they are most important. We do not want—or, at least, we should not want—the Federal Department of Transportation to settle traffic sign disputes for all communities. There is no possibility that the large distant agency can understand all local peculiarities and traditions, which should take precedence over the strict uniformity democracy brings. Or, rather, enforces. It would be the height of ridiculousness to ask people to vote on the President who best promises to direct the Department of Transportation.

Yet that is exactly what happens.

Politicians vying for votes know that most of their audience wouldn’t, and couldn’t, understand the complexities of their mandates. So they dumb-down their messages, or become dumb themselves, which results in a large proportion of simpletons who run and then hold office. Hello, Maxine.

As voting expands, to both offices and matters, the more farcical the entire process must become. Each time the voting franchise was expanded, the same arguments made here today appeared, and were rejected. They will be rejected again. Equality, the driving force behind the expansions, must continue its ravages until it destroys it host.

There is, therefore, no solution. But there is the hope that these arguments are remembered when the inevitable Restoration comes.

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