James Shelley, interesting as always, has a piece up today on citizenship in the digital age. He is quite right in practically everything he says there, but I think there’s a point he’s missing.

Things may be different in whatever European Socialist country James lives in (that’s a joke; he lives in Canada), but here in the good old US of A we don’t go in for that ‘democracy’ stuff.

“Democracy is not simply about elections: it is about collectively exerting our collective influence for our collective good.”

Yes, yes; all true. The problem is that in the US (and, all joking aside, it may be different in other western democracies, but I don’t think it’s much different), the great mass of citizens have no collective influence. Not only do we have no say in government policy, as likely as not we are not even told what government policy is, or the reasons for it. (All in the name of ‘security’ of course. Whose security they don’t say.)

Democracy is reduced to ticking boxes on an election ballot because that is all we have, and even that is a farce. Like a Roman citizen of the 3rd century, we can dutifully elect our Praetors and celebrate our Consuls, and pretend that those things matter, but the real power is in the hands of a handful of people who pay no attention to the needs or voice of the masses, and they are not going to give it up willingly.

Before we can exercise our collective influence, we must take it back. That process took about 1800 years after the fall of the Roman Republic. I hope we can move a little more quickly this time.