The Tyranny of Democracy

When they came for our hedge, I barely protested. I was too busy with an upcoming math exam and defending my B-course thesis. Apparently, the public officials of the appropriate committee, who I never saw, never elected, had decreed it wouldn't make any difference to to the people who've basked in its closure and shadow for decades, hence a speedy and audacious resolution when the absence of those most concerned was most likely. By the power of their logic, I might as well have asked these servants of mine if they would mind me dropping in with a chainsaw to cut short any furniture or extremities whose importance they have never explicitly defended. Now, it seems we cannot park the car by the side of the road, be it in July, for undisclosed reasons possibly related to ploughing. But nobody a resident of Umeå, or any place inhabitable in this country can possibly defend such a restriction around-the-clock, around the year, for the reason of fighting snow. July? We have lots of snow then. Add May through September, for a very conservative estimate, and you have five months of unwarranted tyrannical unaccess to the area around your own house for no apparent reason. Traffic security? That will really see a boost with streets free from troubling obstacles which may actually harm your own vehicle when pressing it well above the speed limit.

Adding that this decision, taken by undisclosed servants of the people (including myself, having done my said duty and cast a vote in the local elections in 2010) for undisclosed reasons with no apparent public debate to an end which I cannot bring myself to defend, is just abhorrent. Just like that, the strength of what used to be called the greatest democracy on earth (I think it's Iceland or Norway now) has erected a ban on placing the car by the roadside outside my own door or garden, or at least well away from the mailbox or garbage cannister, or allow the same for very much invited and welcome guests, be it for the trivial purpose of loading it with cargo or washing it clean. This is just deplorable.

It's exactly what Plato meant when he said democracy would evolve into tyrannical features in its pursuit for leaders, and these ones haven't risen to explain or justify their reasons and apparently unchallengable powers. Even Sulla took pride in walking the streets of Rome unguarded, prepared to offer an explanation for every decision of his career to any citizen concerned by his dubious legacy, something that can hardly be said of many leaders of today, be they dictatorial or appointed "democratically" through the choice of other elected officials (as the Dictators of Ancient Rome were, thus making decisions such as this more a product of Dictatura than Demoskratia).

The power to restrict, regulate and re-furnish the lives of ostensibly free citizens thrives and grows in silence in its general residence of today; the committees rooms, the secret meetings, between the range of coffee cups, and has thus been reduced to the simple truth of a handful of men ruling a throng of other men (and women) by their collective audacity and arbitrariness. Yet, every area South of the river and westwards through Grubbe are exempt. Divide et impera. A justification for this sudden and sacriligious change of order has been sordidly absent, as has information of where villa-owners and their guests may now park their cars without fear of penalty. Frankly, this has nothing to do with democracy at all. Democracy allows only for participation of all willing adults and the erection of a frontier of inalienable individual dignity and freedom. This is the hallmark of an oligarchic order, reeking from the sad fact of almost every human's seemingly nature-given tendency for wielding a scepter and forcing others to submit to their own preferential order. Control your environment or become a product of it. Screw that truth.

"Professor, I'm not what you term a civilized man! I've severed all ties with society, for reasons that I alone have the right to appreciate. Therefore I obey none of its regulations, and I insist that you never invoke them in front of me!" (Verne)