This November, Americans will have the thrilling choice between choosing which geriatric white man will be their president. The majority of Americans are not enthusiastic about this decision at all. With most seeing these candidates as individuals in decline and voting for a candidate to prevent the other from being elected. While there are obvious differences between the two men, this election further highlights the faults of the American political system and the broader liberal democratic order. There is a lot to be said about the American political system: the legalized bribery, the electoral college, the first[1]past-the-post system stifling any choices beyond the duopoly, etc. However, all of these individual practices underscore
Venkat Lal Das, an 18-year-old student at Morgantown High School, is deeply immersed in the world of politics. Alongside his friends, he manages Zenith Institute, a platform dedicated to insightful analysis related to current events, science, and media analysis. In 2023, Venkat’s passion for politics led him to secure 4th place in the National Political Science Bee. Venkat will start studying anthropology at George Washington University in Washington DC this upcoming fall. He hopes to become an immigration attorney tackling critical and sensitive border issues. something far more troubling about American democracy—a lack of imagination or perception to change politics in a radical way. This problem is not isolated to the US; in fact, it is something the entire world is facing. The neoliberal transformation that has swept the world has created a sense of alienation beyond description. Political discourse across the world solely revolves around the charade of liberal democratic elections or in more authoritarian nations the whims of autocrats, people are locked into systems which are not benefiting anyone other than those in privileged positions. Actual democratic projects are ridiculed or shut down. Gezi Park and the Occupy movement highlights forms of governance that transcend traditional state structures, which strived for and proved to open people’s minds to what was possible in terms of the viability of alternative social realities. These examples were crushed; however, similar projects, such as those in the Mexican state of Chiapas and in Northern Syria, also highlight these principles and are able to survive despite serious challenges. The difference between these projects and liberal democracies is that people are actually empowered and feel that their creative power is capable of enacting meaningful, swift change. For example the system of communes in Northern Syria are able to permit individuals including children to direct affairs and play a part in the construction of medical facilities and schools in the territory. In liberal democracies, The vast bureaucratic order we have leads us to be disempowered and not in charge of our lives, rendering us as atomized individuals that act as cogs in a machine. This leads to a culture that is fundamentally opposed to creative power and imaginative thought. This manifests itself in shifting away from the actual substance of the thought to the viability of it in our political order. For example, in the United States, the systems of capital makes it very difficult for the president to enact meaningful debt forgiveness but allow him to send tons of weapons to an apartheid state without congressional approval. Democrats are correct when they explain to those who are dismayed by this that Biden’s plans for debt forgiveness were shot down by a reactionary Supreme Court and it isn’t necessarily his fault, and that he is trying to exploit loopholes that still give aid to specific students. But do they realize that this is fundamentally the issue? Why do wehave a system where the courts can essentially allow a paywall on education, but the courts can’t stop the United States from aiding an active genocide? Our dogmas related to what is politically viable have to be torn down if we want to save the world from climate disaster, neo-colonialism, and the immediate threat of fascism. We need to drop the guard of liberal democracy as some heroic savior when it is precisely what has led to these demagogic forces that thrive on the alienation that is embedded into the system of liberal democracy. All power must be returned from those with privilege to those without it so that there can be a true sense of democracy. I do not proclaim to have the cut and dry solution but it starts with allowing the flow of ideas, radical ideas to have greater prominence. And these ideas should be heavily scrutinized but not under the current paradigm of political viability rather on a viability of how they will solve the problems we face today while ensuring the citizens of the world are actively able to shape their destinies.