> But many people— including many people in politics and the world of commentary who bleat on and on about threats to democracy when expressing their outrage over January 6 (or when talking about a foreign government that doesn’t do what the United States wants it to do)— don’t believe in this basic democratic principle. They hate the notion that the public, which they see as naive and easily manipulated, ought to be able to stop them from pursuing their geostrategic dreams or prevent them from morally posturing throughout the world.
I think you're sort of putting words in their mouth. One can be concerned about an easily manipulated public (eg. the high speed rail debacle you have written about so well) and still support democracy in general. More directly, one can see the flaws in democracy while also agreeing that it's the best system we have come up with.
The public conflates war justification and likelihood of success. Afghanistan was undoubtedly a just war, but now that it's a *tactical* failure, we will hear all sorts of reasons why it was never just in the first place. See also Vietnam. It's funny how no one claims defending South Korea was unjust--the only difference being operational success.
> But many people— including many people in politics and the world of commentary who bleat on and on about threats to democracy when expressing their outrage over January 6 (or when talking about a foreign government that doesn’t do what the United States wants it to do)— don’t believe in this basic democratic principle. They hate the notion that the public, which they see as naive and easily manipulated, ought to be able to stop them from pursuing their geostrategic dreams or prevent them from morally posturing throughout the world.
I think you're sort of putting words in their mouth. One can be concerned about an easily manipulated public (eg. the high speed rail debacle you have written about so well) and still support democracy in general. More directly, one can see the flaws in democracy while also agreeing that it's the best system we have come up with.
The public conflates war justification and likelihood of success. Afghanistan was undoubtedly a just war, but now that it's a *tactical* failure, we will hear all sorts of reasons why it was never just in the first place. See also Vietnam. It's funny how no one claims defending South Korea was unjust--the only difference being operational success.