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Is Democracy Working?

It's been somewhat of a bad year for western democracy. From the US government shutdown to legislature and the democratic process disabling some western countries from trying to assist in the Syrian crisis. Voter dissatisfaction is high and it's not just Russell Brand concerned with 'economic disparity' and the 'underclass'. What are your thoughts?

Reply 1

Martyn*

Democracy is just a have-your-say in what political party governs the country every five years or so. The strength of which a given political party gains power is directly parallel to the strength at which a given political party can sucessfully issue a programme of propaganda and thus persuade the electorate, directly or indirectly, to support the ideas of the power-grasping political party by marking an x in the box upon a piece of paper.

(edited 10 years ago)

Democracy smells tbh

Not sure about democracy, but freedom is doing its job in the Western countries and the ones which have rightly followed in their path. The un-free world is still alive and kicking unfortunately. The core problem is the extremely pungent smell of bad ideas which consistently emanates from third world countries. Until these places shake off their shackles and admit that they were wrong about how to build human civilisation, they will never be free.

Reply 4

Jjj90

Generally i'm just thankful that I live here and now as apposed to pretty much anywhere else ever in the history of humanity. We shape our own lives more now than ever before, most of our concerns are pathetically trivial. Voter dissatisfaction seems to stem from things that generally do not affect us directly, i.e. immigration and benefits etc, if we didn't read papers we wouldn't have a clue.

I'm looking at this from a historic standpoint here. Democracy might not be perfect but it pretty damn good really and although it may not have spread to every corner of the planet yet it's still a relativity new phenomena in it's current form.

The problem isn't with democracy as such, perhaps our democracy needs ironing out though.