Flushing out the Augean parliament

Moving power from the centre to the periphery

“What I do see is the last feeble stirrings of the instinct of self-preservation, the last remnant at the command of a condemned world-system.”

Leo Naphta in Thomas Mann’s, The Magic Mountain

I want to acknowledge some criticisms that have come up in comments and private texts over the last few weeks regarding my arguments about democracy.¹ I keep going on about the importance of democratic governance, but people are rightly worried that, in practice, special interests wield so much power—through the major parties—that they overwhelm any possibility of what a functioning democracy should be, which is self-rule by the people themselves.

As the previously unthinkable happens and America descends into “an unapologetically white supremacist, misogynistic, oligarchical, Christian nationalist agenda”—fascism for short—we need to get our democratic ducks in row.

The argument comes down to whether we can continue to pursue democratic reform within the existing institutions of the state, or whethe…