SonicFlyer

No, this is incorrect. I have no idea what the JBS slogan is, nor do I care, but the US is not a democracy. Despite having some democratic elements, such as elections of representatives, it doesn't mean that the US is a democracy in any way.



So now it's just ok to redefine words to fit one's narrative? Yeah, ok....

DeltaboundRedux

The US is a managerial state. Been that way since FDR.

Elect the man/woman who'll appoint a couple of hundred temporary managers with minimal hire/fire authority who'll somehow control a permanent bureaucracy of millions, nearly all of whom will certainly outlast the new "boss".

"Experts" rule through elected officials.

By all means, though, vote if it makes you feel better.

(To be fair, the managerial state is really the only way you can guide a country on track to have 400 million citizens.)

Hubcapped

Delta, are you saying (with your meme quote) that the world is more insecure with western capitalism dominated styles of “democracy” than dictatorship?

i guess my question is, what are YOU saying exactly with that quote? What do you believe your quote means? And does it have validity?

METO Guido

Democracy stalls when a reelection candidate is recorded directing sworn office holders to decertify election results while manufacturing 11780 partisan votes. It’s crashed & burned when even the losers admit it but don’t care. Access to the ongoing drama, all that remains of the once revered words carved into those monuments. Confidence in a multiparty, democratic process? Dead as Kelsey’s nuts

DeltaboundRedux

You've been elected to be President. Supreme executive power is yours to be had.

You must now issue edicts that will affect millions..even billions. Pandemics, energy policy, monetary policy, kinetic warfare - including first use of nuclear weapons without warning.

Pretty technical questions. You can "google it", or you can call in "the experts", who've been in their bureaucracies for decades while you've spent most of your life raising cash from donors for your campaigns. They were never elected, you've no way to independently evaluate their competence or abilities (because odds are, you have a law degree which you hardly ever used in litigation or anything, really).

You'll go with what the experts tell you. Except their expertise is in extremely narrow and focused fields: they don't have a holistic meta view of government because that's not what they're paid for.

This is rule by a managerial elite.

If you make the decisions "by the seat of your pants" for the issue of the moment based on gut feelings, you're like a monkey using a dart board to pick stocks.

If you have a long term vision that you're going to ruthlessly pursue, then you'd better be FDR and be willing to stick it out for 4 terms, pack courts, pack bureaus, reward friends and punish enemies, gleefully embrace machine politics and their inherent corruption, even court World Wars for national prestige and power. (I'm in absolute awe of FDR, to be honest)

Otherwise, do what the experts tell you, and you can enjoy the trappings of power (considerable) and financial benefits (extreme, when you get out), and if anything goes south your defense will be "I did the best I could with the information provided to me."

(/rant off. There's no correcting this; all of this is inherent to huge, global spanning powers. Voting is nothing more than a power-legitimacy tool in our current republic for the masses to feel like they're being heard)

Hubcapped

you didnt answer the question. Do you believe the world is less secure with democratic styles of government versus dictatorship? Its your quote man, own it.

SonicFlyer

Yep this is spot on. I think the phrase you're looking for is "technocracy"

DeltaboundRedux

Yes.

You believe you live in something else?

Interesting.

…….

DeltaboundRedux

You say potato, I say po-tah-tow.

“Technocracy” is a more recent internet labeling of what James Burnham was describing in his seminal (and boring, I own an original copy and slogged through it) 1941 work “The Managerial Revolution”.

Bit of an odd cat himself. JB was a stalwart cold warrior and arch conservative (started National Review), but was also hard corps CIA and in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars directing the “Committee for Cultural Freedom” in France, Germany, Italy, etc pushing anything “anti communist” during the Cold War, co-opting any Western European ideas that didn’t promote US supremacy, even if that meant non-communist leftism. All kinds of illegal stuff going on here.

George Orwell famously authored 1984. Everyone here has been taught that it was an anti-communist polemic. It was probably a warning by Orwell to the West that the post Western world order was not what it seemed. Orwell, who was British intelligence during WW2, refused to go along with CIA fronts to reshape Western thought through covert and extremely well funded mass cultural influence campaigns.

Orwell probably wrote himself as the protagonist Winston in 1984…fighting the good fight for truth, but ultimately saw the futility of it. Burnham was O’Brian…constantly revising history to meet the Party’s needs. The “1984” title wasn’t a future vision: it was a direct attack against the current British PM, Attlee…1948.

One of the famous lines “The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” Seems ridiculous.

Then remember: western powers were sending troops, money, and experts to fight communism in the Soviet Union to support the White Army during their civil war.

WWII: whoops! Stalin is awesome! Now he’s “Uncle Joe”. He gets unlimited assistance, at the expense of our allies and NOT A PENNY ever paid back (unlike the UK, on the hook until early 2000’s)

Cold War: Soviets Bad!



When it comes to great nations, there is only one constant: POWER.

When it comes to governance, there is only one method: bureaucracy. “Experts”, “technocrats”, or “managerialism”.

(I love James Burnham for his book “Suicide of the West”. I also know he’d consider me grist for the US empire mill and a useful stooge, if he considered me at all. Democracy is a sham.).

TLDR: Recommend “The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Francis Sondor Saunders” for a good read in CIA activities in Europe post WWII through 1967 when they got caught and had to retool.

Hubcapped

Yes i believe the world i live in today is safer than living on the shores of sussex or kent in the 7th century.

call me crazy