President Biden’s Sept. 1 speech in Philadelphia on “unity” is a poignant instance of the confusion surrounding the idea of democracy. Mr. Biden declared that MAGA Republicans threaten “the very foundations of our republic.” The phrase a “risk to American democracy” is so commonplace today that it hardly carries any which means—besides that it encapsulates the reigning ideology of our time, an ideology so pervasive that it nearly goes unnoticed. It’s just like the air we breathe.
I name it democratism. It’s an imaginative and idealistic understanding of fashionable rule that disdains atypical individuals and appears to a cadre of so-called consultants to function the levers of energy. Below this ideology, “democracy” and “the individuals” are rhetorical cowl for the need of the elites. Consider social media’s censorship of misinformation within the identify of “supporting democracy” and “upholding free expression.” How is it that censorship passes as upholding free expression?
