The People have the Power
But we can't rely on democracy to protect our freedoms
Quite how I missed the chance to see Patti Smith when she played two nights at the London Palladium last October, I shall never know. Let’s just blame the excess of emails, notifications and alerts to which we’re all subjected these days. I was even more miffed when I saw that she played one of my favourite song of hers for the encore.
The People have the Power, which opens her 1988 album Dream of Life, is one of many exceptional tracks on that record, and its lyric sets the scene for a collection of remarkable poems, backed by music from an artist at the peak of her creative powers. Here’s the opening verse:
I was dreaming in my dreaming
of an aspect bright and fair
and my sleeping it was broken
but my dream it lingered near
in the form of shining valleys
where the pure air recognized
and my senses newly opened
I awakened to the cry
that the people have the power
to redeem the work of fools
upon the meek the graces shower
it’s decreed the people rule
I was reminded of both the sentiment of the song, and its inspiring words, when I read this sermon (his word, not mine) from Mike Brock yesterday.
It’s a fabulous, uplifting read, in which Mike suggests of Trump and his lunatic supporters, that
‘If they had the numbers, they wouldn’t need the violence. If they had the numbers, they wouldn’t need the propaganda. If they had the numbers, they wouldn’t need to suppress speech and demonetize truth-tellers and shadowban documentation.’
‘If they had the numbers, they could just vote.’
‘They don’t have the numbers. That’s why they’re destroying democracy. Because democracy counts. And when you count, they lose.’
Which got me thinking, once again, about democracy, and why, although it’s our most important tool in the struggle for freedom and progress, it is also the most fragile.
Patti Smith is right: in a democracy, the people do have the power, but the effective use of that power is contingent on enough people taking the time, and making the effort, to understand what is really happening in the world; how politics and the decisions of the powerful can either support or undermine their own interests and, perhaps most importantly, to recognise that many of those who seek power, even in a democracy, are not always motivated by the idea of public service.
Voters no longer face a choice between Conservative and Labour, or Republican and Democrat, in the sense of traditional parties committed to democratic principles, ready to accept defeat, and offering variations on a system about which there is broad consensus that, while it’s not perfect, it generally protects the interests of most citizens.
Today the choice is between those who wish to sustain and bolster democracy as the best chance of extending freedom and security to as many people as possible; and those for whom democracy is the main obstacle to their ambitions to secure as much power and wealth for themselves as they can. People who, recognising they’ll never have the votes, have no scruples about maintaining their power by whatever means necessary.
The fragility of our democracies leaves them open to being hijacked by the likes of Trump: clever but deranged people who target dissatisfaction with the current order and offer false promises of improvement, before walking off with the loot and laughing at those who were so easily fooled into supporting them.
We urgently need to learn the lesson of Trump’s America and ensure we don’t let the same happen elsewhere. Of course, it would help enormously if more mainstream politicians would call out Trump for what he is, and acknowledge publicly what kind of country and world his administration is seeking to create.
Anyone on the populist far-right who holds a candle for Trump is bound to follow his example if they are allowed anywhere near power. That should be enough to prevent all but a tiny minority of damaged, hateful people from voting for Nigel Farage here in Britain, Marine le Pen in France, or the AfD’s Alice Weidel in Germany. It is deeply worrying that opinion polls show such high levels of support for these people.
But Mike Brock is right: there are many more decent, reasonable people in the world than there are people who will knowingly support the far right. But too many of them still fail to engage sufficiently with political reality when it comes to election time.
If we do contrive to vote our fragile democracies out of existence, then those of us who cherish the hard won liberties democracy is supposed to safeguard will only have ourselves to blame: for not working hard enough to persuade enough of our fellow citizens that life, post-democracy, will be a great deal harder for everyone except the sociopaths who delight in the prospect.
Patti Smith’s Dream of Life also includes a sublime lullaby that she and her late husband, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, wrote for their son Jackson when he was born. In it, they lay out their hopes for his life. Democracy, and how we use it, is not just about the world we create for ourselves today, it’s about the world we leave for our children.
I somehow missed Patti Smith at that tiniest of excellent venues too ffs. Thank you for the fascinating words as ever