Democracy. Don’tcha just love it?

“Government of the people by the people for the people”

What a succinct statement of what Democracy is not.

The trick is to use the word “people” with two distinct meanings. This is an understandable error. It arises from the fact that in a Democracy, all democracies, there are two distinct realms.

The first is Realworld. That’s where you and I live. Where we have mortgages and rent, credit card bills, shopping, jobs we don’t like, sicknesses and deaths.

The other is The Gilded Cage. That’s where those that govern us live. It’s not exactly a physical location, although you will find zones of all national capitals and most state capitals where there are coagulations of the rulers in various locations. During the US occupation/administration of Iraq, they even tried to define a specific Green Zone where the overlords lived and worked. It’s more a cultural and mental thing, defined by complete unawareness of the harsh realities of Realworld.

Now, “people” in the first instance means us, the plebs, the peasantry, the unwashed masses who do the work and clear up the mess. And vote.

In the other two cases, it means those within The Gilded Cage, a self-selected, self-elected, self-styled elite. They  make up rules and laws. The captains and the kings, the movers and shakers, the stars, the celebs.

And they have absolutely no idea what is happening in Realworld.

It is alleged that when Marie Antoinette was confronted by the news of starvation among the populace who did not have even bread to eat, she said, “Let them eat cake”. Now this was not a stupid remark. As an inhabitant of The Gilded Cage, in her world, if for some unknown reason there was a lack of bread, there would always be cake. That was a reality in her Gilded Cage and she should not be expected to understand that things were different elsewhere.

In modern times, there is at least one state where the “head man” has been in and out or prison. Don’t squeak too soon, there are a few of ‘em around the world. This one “leads” a nations where  a significant proportion of the populace are dirt poor farmers whose livelihoods and lives are wrecked and threatened by floods and weather events on an almost daily basis. The head man comes from the upper echelons of society. There is absolutely no way he can understand the lives, wants and needs of these people. No matter how hard he tries, and I am sure he does his best, there is no possibility of understanding a person whose entire life has been the exact opposite of his. The jolting oxcart of that life is a virtual world away from the cushioned limo of his own. There are no potholes on the highway of his life.

We now have generations of professional politicians, who went to school and then uni. They studied politics, economics, media studies or something equally relevant to Realworld, like flower arranging. There they either acquired political convictions, came from what they perceived as the “ruling class” or realised that an easy ride lay ahead. They slipped into the Gilded Cage, as interns, PAs or similar, and then crawled up, perch by greasy perch, to become fully fledged politicians, qualified by their conquest of the slippery path to pontificate over our lives.

They have no experience of Realworld having left it when they left uni or before.

And don’t bleat on about those that came from the “Working Class”, you know very well what I mean. By whatever means, anybody who has moved on to the political conveyor belt has left Realworld and traded their allegiance for the key to the Gilded Cage.

“But, what about The Vote?” you cry. “That’s what defines Democracy. We have the power to choose our rulers.”

Ah, yes. The Vote.

Every four years or whatever, We-The-People get a vote. One vote.

One vote to choose:

• Our leader, premier, president, whatever
• Our representative for our local constituency
• Foreign policy
• Domestic policy
• Immigration policy
• Health policy
• Employment policy
• Education policy
• Social services
• Transport
• Treatment for minority groups
• Bribery and corruption policy
• Law enforcement
• Fly tipping
• School dinners

From large to small, all issues – one vote.

Not much of a choice, is it?

And don’t think you’re even getting a free choice or selection.

Your choice will be between candidates carefully selected by a clique of Gilded Cagers. Either that or waste your vote on an unsupported outsider.

Today, because of social media, we can influence the Gilded Cage by posts on various platforms. But that has no statutory basis, no support in law. It can be ignored at will, it’s only power is the looming threat of the next Election.

And yet, we live in an age where we vote every day on matters that are really pressing to us. We do it through a neat little machine called an ATM. Your bank’s hole in the wall. There you vote, effectively, on the most important matter: how much cash you want to draw out. It’s a voting machine. And you trust it with the most important thing in running your daily life – money. OK, so there is a bit of fraud and I am not belittling its severity or its terrible consequences when it happens. But, all in all, it’s a very reliable system and nearly all of us trust it.

It would be quite simple to have a system of automated vote registering machines that you could visit whenever you wished. The machine could have a menu of important current topics, presented as propositions, and you could register your vote on each one. There would be built-in safeguards so that you couldn’t register multiple votes on one topic, etc. but nothing that is not already handled by the ATM system.

That would have legal validity. The vote so registered would define the actions of the politicians.

Oh, but some of these matters are so complex, it would be silly to expect We-The-People to understand. Oh, yeah? Have you listened to some of the dummies that waffle away from the corridors of power? And if it’s a question of complexity, then it’s about time said dummies learned how to present their case, which is not by slagging off the opposing faction and solely looking at the next election.

And then there’s the question of who gets to do the Ruling thing. At the moment, it is a self-selected clique of Gilded Cagers, career politicians, most of whom would not have passed an interview for a pizza delivery rider.

Anybody who wants to run for public office should automatically barred. They’re either nuts or crooked or both. Most have their own private agendas to follow, and it doesn’t involve the welfare of  We-The-People.

I think we need a selected body of a thousand people. That should do it.

If a selected panel of twelve people, with suitable and impartial advice and guidance from a judge are sufficient to deliberate on someone’s entire life, then amongst a thousand there should be enough common sense to see us through. If not, then we really deserve what we get.

My panel would be selected at random form the electoral register. And it would be compulsory, no draft dodging.

Of course they would need vetting to weed out he loonies, but if, for example, there is the occasional weird freak, do you not think the other 999 ought be able to spot him? They would have the power to ignore or isolate that one.

After all, looking at our current world leaders…. Freaks? Are you kidding me?

We would then have something approaching a ruling body which represented the make-up of We-The-People. We would get some lawyers, electricians, surgeons, plumbers, shop workers. Real people who know what it’s like in Realworld, who have life experience outside the Gilded Cage.

Some would be intelligent, others downright thick. But the panel should be able to work out which is which.

The panel would run the government, with advice, same as now, from experts as needed. It would require a protocol and a period of time to establish itself and choose a lead representative who would be the premier.

To avoid a permanence and the emergence of long-term leadership (always dangerous), after three years, three hundred would be thanked for their efforts and replaced with a new intake. There would always be a core with a year or two’s experience to have “learned the ropes” and not enough to lose their edge or become too corrupt.

Even if they were each paid a high six-figure sum each year, it would be cheaper than the mess we have. And no side bars. Once selected, that is the only employment allowed for the term or office and for a period afterwards so that their influence would be gone before they were allowed to seek employment.

Democracy? Yes, that would be a nice thing to have.