Is Super Girl a Force for Democracy?

Super Girl is China's American Idol, and that question was asked earlier this month in the state-run Beijing Today:

For nearly three hours last week China stopped -- and voted. But this was no political revolution. This was popular culture at its most powerful and bizarre -- a massive thumbs-up to a 21-year-old from Sichuan, who belted out a song called "Zombie", a rendition of a hit by Irish rock band, the Cranberries…

Nothing this large and spontaneous has ever pushed its way unapproved into China's mainstream media before. And never before have the Chinese voted in such large numbers.

The Economist (sub. only) points to the China Daily's take:

How come an imitation of a democratic system ends up selecting the singer who has the least ability to carry a tune?

Comments

[joe]

I know! Because it's a really GOOD imitation of a democratic system.

[ed]

Yep, they're gonna bury us.

[thoreau]

Clay Aiken would be worse!

[Jeff P.]

Out of curiosity, has anyone actually compared the American Idol voting totals to the last U.S. Election?

[TallDave]

I love the message here: You can vote freely... just not for your leaders.

[Phil]

It wouldn't be really meaningful, Jeff P. Idol voters can vote more than once.

I like that the URL for Beijing Today is "bjtoday.com." It appeals to my inner 12-year-old.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

"Zombie"? Jesus Christ, didn't that piece of crap come out, like, a hundred years ago?

Zommmmmmmmbie! Zommmmmmmmbie! Zommmmm-bi-bi-bi-bi!

[Pig Mannix]

I like that the URL for Beijing Today is "bjtoday.com." It appeals to my inner 12-year-old.

Unfortunately, it also appeals to the inner 12-year-old of my employer's internet censorware. Did I miss anything important?

[Jeff P.]

Phil, I live in CT, where "vote early, vote often" is our mantra.

[Xmas]

In your head! In...Your...HEAD! Zombie! Zombay! Zombee eee eee eee aaa eee

[mediageek]

How come an imitation of a democratic system ends up selecting the singer who has the least ability to carry a tune?

We are talking about the land that spawned Peking Opera, here. Determining who has the least ability to carry a tune is probably a matter of splitting hairs.

[gaius marius]

How come an imitation of a democratic system ends up selecting the singer who has the least ability to carry a tune?

the great unanswerable for advocates of democracy. i would posit (without statistics) that more vaudevillians, madmen and criminals make it into leadership in a democracy than under any other form of government -- and magnify that, in the special case of the united states, by the psychopathic dementia brought onto leadership by the absolute power of the presidency. it's a tree all but designed to produce rotten fruit, imo.

[Rhywun]

i would posit (without statistics) that more vaudevillians, madmen and criminals make it into leadership in a democracy than under any other form of government

?? Might I humbly suggest that that's nuts? I think the subjects of your average totalitarian state might disagree with your hypothesis.

[thoreau]

gaius is just upset that Clay Aikin (spelling?) lost.

[gaius marius]

i am, mr thoreau. ... who was he?

might i note, mr rhywun, that many an average totalitarian is put into power by a vote of the people?

[mediageek]

I think the subjects of your average totalitarian state might disagree with your hypothesis.

Nah. After all, in a totalitarian state you have one insane criminal vaudevillian running the show. Under a democracy they're all fighting to see who can be the most insane, criminal, and vaudevillian.

[Rhywun]

mediageek,

It occurred to me that mr. gaius might have been thinking along those lines, but that's not how it came out. We may have numerous criminals in power in the good ole USA, but none of them hold a candle, IMHO, to the likes of Kim Jong Il, Mugabe, et al.

[Vynnie]

Gaius & Rhywun -

If you're discussing which system gives us leaders we can trust, I don't think it's been invented, or will be. Power corrupts.

The advantage of democracy is that it gives this week's Commander in Thief something to fear (loss of the next election, of his party's control in the legislature, impeachment, whatnot) should he decide to dump chemical weapons on cultural minorities or tell women they can't wear pants. In addition, it tends to set two or more political parties at one another's throats, making it harder for either to fleece the populace.

Which is probably why most democratically-spawned dictators rush to eliminate future elections and opposition parties.

[heffer]

How come an imitation of a democratic system ends up selecting the singer who has the least ability to carry a tune?

Um... because that wasn't the criteria! Idiot.

[thoreau]

Vynnie hits the nail on the head. Many dictators have been elected. How many have faced a serious challenge in their re-election bids? Oh, no doubt a few anecdotes exist. But how many?

[mediageek]

Rhywun, Vynnie said it far better than I could have.

[gaius marius]

Power corrupts.

indeed, mr vynnie, i would say that lord acton abbreviated a more complex truth -- that the insecurities of power corrupt, and that great power fosters great insecurity.

democracy does nothing better than foster insecurity. thus we witness the appearance of mass politics following quickly on the heels of the move from parliamentary republicanism to plebiscitarian democracy in europe following world war one. thus we witness the repeated seizures of power and failures of democracy in interwar europe, where the vast majority of newly-established democracies quickly vanished into the maw of dictatorship.

power does not get vastly more absolute than monarchy (although every monarch plays a part in a balancing act), and in the long history of european monarchs most are remembered very well indeed, many as the most attractive leadership the nation ever had (jacobin propaganda notwithstanding). it seems to me that to say that power means corruption is not enough.

[gaius marius]

Many dictators have been elected. How many have faced a serious challenge in their re-election bids?

precisely, mr thoreau -- but this is not indicative of a strength of any democratic system. indeed, democracy systemically dictates that the conditions for its own immolation quickly arise. dictators and the violent end of democracy are the neccesary issue of democracy. this point is at least as old as plato's republic, and we deny it to our peril.

the american experiment in democracy, now being some eighty years old -- having been first manifested in the anarchic rejection of a commercial-aristocratic republic in the 1880s, culminating in the depression of the 1930s that sent populists to power en masse -- would seem to me to be rapidly degenerating now into autocracy by popular demand.

[Stevo Darkly]

Zombie

Hey, I actually kind of miss that song. It was kinda cool, the way the chick's voice kept breaking and all. Although it made it really hard to sing along in the car.

The Cranberries also had another hit back then -- I think it was "Dreams."

[Stevo Darkly]

Oh, and "Linger." I kind of liked "Linger" too.

[Lowdog]

Stevo - the juxtaposition of the words "finger" and "linger" always had a certain perverse effect on my younger mind when that song was out. Unfortunately, that perverse effect seems to have stuck with me.

[Stevo Darkly]

Lowdog: That was one of the cool things about the song, IMO. 🙂

[Shelby]

How come an imitation of a democratic system ends up selecting the singer who has the least ability to carry a tune?

Come and see the bad taste inherent in the system!

[db]

Of course, the apparency of a solution can often be mistaken for the actuality of a solution. Let 'em vote for their music and a few other things and their desire for personal input into other, less visceral things, like government, will diminish, perhaps.

[Carl]

"How many times do I have to say it? Democracy doesn't work people!"

[Carl]

Heh, correcting my quote:

"When are people going to learn? ... Democracy doesn't work!" (http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F20.html)

[thoreau]

I understand the basic critique of democracy: The majority will oppress the minority.

I also know that countries with free, open, and regular elections are, for all of their problems, usually better places to live than countries without meaningful elections.

To be fair, the favored solution of people like gm is to replace the rule of the people with the rule of a virtuous elite. Not the rule of the many, but not the rule of the one that you get in dictatorships. The rule of the few. Well, good luck finding an elite that will remain virtuous if it gets to rule without the consent of the governed. The closest we have today seems to be China, ruled by a circle of Communist Party leaders. (Yeah, supposedly Hu Jintao is in charge, but who put Hu in power?)

Raise your hand if you'd prefer to live in China rather than the West.

OK, now everybody who has an Asian fetish put down your hand. How many hands are still raised?

There is no magic cure for the corruption that's inevitable in government. It requires a combination of measures, all centered around the themes of openness and checks and balances:

-division of powers
-an independent judiciary
-free, open, competitive, and regular elections
-enumerated rights
-a bicameral legislature
-a free and energetic press
-an educated society (note that I didn't say anything about public education there)
-civilian control over the police and military
-guaranteed rights for minorities, including ethnic and religious minorities
-protection of property rights
-a vigorous, innovative, and diversified private sector (notice that I didn't endorse antitrust laws, but even in the US, the locales dependent on a single industry are frequently more corrupt than other locales)

These things are impossible to achieve by fiat, they require vigilance to maintain, and they aren't guarantees. Nothing is guaranteed, after all. But these things have a better track record than unelected governments.

[thoreau]

Oh, and while I understand the basic critique (it goes back to Plato's Republic), I wouldn't cite Plato as the best authority here. Yeah, he articulated a critique that many libertarians sympthize with. But if you actually read the Republic, it's full of wacky ideas for a centrally planned society. The critique that democracy leads to the rise of a strongman is either a diamond in the rough or a broken clock being right twice a day. Take your pick. Me, I prefer to look elsewhere for my insights. Plato was brilliant in many ways, but I'm underwhelmed by the Republic.

[thoreau]

quasibill-

I wasn't responding specifically to you. The general topic seemed to be whether elections are crucial to a free society. I strongly believe that elections are an absolutely essential element for the long-term sustainability of a free society. I also recognize that elections alone are absolutely insufficient.

Also, in my use of the word "democracy", I was sloppy. I recognize that there are two general usages: The more innocuous one (any government that relies on the consent of the governed via free and open elections) and the libertarian nightmare scenario (absolute, unchecked power of the 50.00001%). The thing is, outside of some conservative and libertarian message boards, does anybody else actually use the second definition? Does anybody else even want the nightmare scenario? Yeah, I know, pundits and politicians will, when convenient, say "This policy has majority support" as if that's enough, but we have to distinguish between soundbites and what actually happens.

Anyway, I think mostly I was arguing with gaius marius. Just about everybody else here would agree that elections are necessary (not sufficient, I know, but necessary) for a free and prosperous country, if combined with various checks and balances. But gaius marius seems to think it would be better if only a handful of people got to have any say in how we're ruled.

[quasibill]

Well, I don't agree with GM's "utopia" either, but there is some support for the idea that even limited democracies are no better than propertied monarchies at fostering liberty. And in fact, may be worse, as people lose sight of the fact that they are not the same thing as their government. Hoppe has written some very thought-provoking books on the subject, as have some others.

Not that I (or Hoppe, for that matter, as far as I understand) want to live under a propertied monarchy. But then, I don't really want to live under a democracy, either. It's just that it may be a mistake to believe that democracy is somehow a necessary ingredient to liberty - it may not be. I think it's pretty clear that anarcho-capitalists like myself don't think so, and in fact believe that democracies are just as dangerous as any other state.

[gaius marius]

But gaius marius seems to think it would be better if only a handful of people got to have any say in how we're ruled.

indeed i would, if a deserving elite could be found. a republic of voting elites would be far better than the mob ballot we endure under now. not only in its policy decisions, but in its durability -- the mob ballot generally results in the popular election of the utterly unethical tyrant within a few generations, whereas a republic of narrow franchise has an electorate interested, educated and intelligent enough to avert such disasters -- not to mention nominating and electing rulers only from the vetted clique, as opposed to any dumbshit off the street with a silver tongue.

if the masses are the power, and the masses are idiots, then the people in power are sure to be exploitative in the first order. an interested and diverse elite will at least prevent the large-scale rape of the republic, which has been the dominant characteristic of western politics post-victorian.

i'm afraid you'd have a lot more work to do to convince me, mr thoreau, that democracy is anything but a corrupted and dying republic, the former assiduously destroying the gains made under the latter. america was much more admirable as a political instrument from 1770-1850 than its been since the rise of nationalism and plebiscitarianism (not that it was altogether admirable even in that earlier phase). while its power has expanded, its morality has evaporated -- and that surely works to undermine its power, and will destroy us by suicide in time.

good luck finding an elite that will remain virtuous if it gets to rule without the consent of the governed

there isn't one today, i grant you -- its why i don't sit around pining for bill gates and paris hilton to take control. but to claim that no such elite ever existed is simply not to be informed of the history of civilizations. the existence of a capable and moral elite is the founding-stone of any civilization, a necessary component. and when it fades, a civilization starts to die.

so what of it? i can hear you say. the truth is, mr thoreau, that i don't see an answer to our problems now. and so why do i bother bringing it up, you say, if i can't solve it? because acknowledging that one has problems that are beyond solution is better than living in the delusion that everything is fine right up until the moment the lights go out, i say. american deficits are also a problem without a solution; should we ignore them for bliss too? i think not.

But these things have a better track record than unelected governments.

highly debatable -- especially if you consider tyranny the *necessary*, not merely possible, issue of democracy. in the end, none of those principles ever withstands the onslaught of populism, once arisen.

Plato was brilliant in many ways, but I'm underwhelmed by the Republic.

fwiw, the document is an elegy of sparta. i see little to admire in that political model. but the observations of democracy within it remain brilliant and incisive, as plainly true as they ever were.

just as i would not hold up machiavelli's 'prince' as a model of governance, nor would i hold up plato's 'republic'. that doesn't mean both are null.

[gaius marius]

as opposed to any dumbshit off the street with a silver tongue.

or, if your electorate is truly degraded and degenerate in populism, even a silver tongue will be too much "elite" to brook in a leader -- and the electorate will go out of its way to find idiots and criminals who bumble through syntax and over malapropisms with invented words like "strategery" regularly....