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December 27, 2017 - January 3, 2018
An astute colleague of mine once observed that liberal democracies in the West were generally run for the benefit of the top, say, 20 percent of the wealth and income distribution. The trick, he added, to keeping this scheme running smoothly has been to convince, especially at election time, the next 30 to 35 percent of the income distribution to fear the poorest half more than they envy the richest 20 percent.
It reminds me of a graffito I once saw in a Yale toilet stall. Someone had written, “Remember, even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat!” Below, in a different hand, someone else had riposted, “Yeah, but you’re a winner.”
Is it reasonable to expect someone whose waking life is almost completely lived in subservience and who has acquired the habits of survival and self-preservation in such settings to suddenly become, in a town meeting, a courageous, independent-thinking, risk-taking model of individual sovereignty? How does one move directly from what is often a dictatorship at work to the practice of democratic citizenship in the civic sphere?
