Links from Both Sides of My Brain, plus a paragraph of Thoughts.

[ajnabieh]

A. I know a lot of you are also fans/fannish, and so I'm putting this first: The Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures, the fandom-studies journal put out by the OTW, has a new edition out on fandom and activism, which looks really exciting. I had the chance to read two articles before publication, one as a peer reviewer and one as a friend-of-the-author, and I really recommend both of them: The German federal election of 2009: The challenge of participatory cultures in political campaigns and Being of Service: X-Files fans and social engagement. Both are fascinating, and provide interesting ways of thinking about fandom and activism. I'm sure the rest of the issue is as awesome. Check it out, if this stuff interests you.


B. And the news story of the moment is the...I'm looking for a polite synonym for 'clusterf***' here...that is the state of electoral and military politics in Egypt. To be brief about it, the first round of elections put forth two candidates who were unpalatable to the majority of the population (Ahmed Shafiq, who is military in background and had been a part of the Mubarak regime, and Muhammad Morsi, who represents the Muslim Brotherhood, the more centrist of the Islamist politica movements); then, in the past week, SCAF (the military collective ruling at the moment) seized a bunch of rights that had been delegated to the parliament and civilian forces, while the Constitutional Court dismissed the entire democratically elected parliament because of 'irregularities' (sorry for the italics, I just feel ~~ways~~ about this); and Saturday and Sunday (i.e., today and tomorrow), the second round of the elections are being held, amid calls to boycott or invalidate ballots, a bunch of people holding their noses and voting for Shafiq or Morsi, and grumblings about whether the election will be fair at all. I'm sitting here eating a lot of popcorn and trying not to get too anxious, and reading the news. Some articles: Mohammad El Dahshan lays out precisely how bad it is in clear terms, Juan Cole points to the nested nature of the various problems here, and Lauren Bohn describes the level of fracture going on at the ground level. If you want to see what's going on during today and tomorrow's elections, here's the Ahram live blog, and here's Egypt Independent's.

C. Oh, also, in "hey there, war crimes are kinda an issue, you know?" news, the UN is leaving Syria. This...is not good. At all. I have no further commentary, apart from numb horror.

D. And some analysis:

I've been watching politically aware, pro-democracy, pro-revolution Egyptians angst over the outcomes of the first round of presidental elections since they happened, and I've been mulling. I don't disagree with their assessment of the lousiness of the two candidates; if I were an Egyptian citizen, I wouldn't know who to vote for either. (And I sure as hell wouldn't ask Thomas Friedman, but that's another issue.) But here's the thing: this sucks the way functioning democracy sucks. People had widely disbursed political interests; they voted for them. They got a choice between two candidates who both suck, but who represent commonly held positions. You know who can sympathize with this position? French voters in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen, the racist candidate, came in second to the center-right candidate, horrifying everybody from center-left on over (and a lot of other people, too). You know who else can? American voters, who always seem to get stuck voting for people we barely like, but who are less awful than the other guy. (I'm going to be holding my nose *so hard* in November in that voting booth. Buy me a drink and ask me about drone strikes some time.) I'm really sorry, ya al-misriyeen, but this is what democracy is like: it freakin' blows. Amid all the ways in which SCAF is trying to yank power back from the people of Egypt and civiliam power, this presidential election is a sad little reminder that democracy doesn't make everything better--it just makes the process by which we fight things that suck a little cleaner and easier.

Comments

[kass]

I've been reading the new issue of TWC, when I can, and thus far it is quite awesome, unsurprisingly.

I've also been following the Egyptian elections as best I can. And Syria -- oh, my heart. I don't know what anyone can do. I keep them in my prayers.

[frandroid]

Well, this is what broken democracy looks like. You can't talk about the political system in the United States and with a straight face call it a democracy anymore. You need a functioning free press for that to happen, and with the mainstream American press captured by corporate interests... I'm guessing you know this picture.

It doesn't have to suck this way. We have First Past the Post too in Canada, and we know it doesn't have to be this way. (Except it's worse for us in a multi-party system.) The two-turn presidential election double-sucks. At least the French voter on the left of Le Pen had a clear fall-back vote...

[ajnabieh]

See, I guess I'm...more pessimistic about democracy than you are, on the level of national electoral systems for choosing who runs a government. Because, while there are lots of things to say about the way the American system is failing us as citizens right now, it meets all minimal criteria for democracy--there are elections, the amount of fraud involved in them is so minor as to be stochastic noise, various actors balance against each other and have to contest in order to make decisions of governance. Is there a problem with how the exceedingly wealthy and corporate interests play a role in the system of governance? Hell yeah. But, do they rule unilaterially and without contestation (either from popular pressure or from *other* wealthy/corporate entities)? No. Are there different ways of setting up the system that might work better in some cases? Absolutely (I'm partial to the German legislature's method of translating votes into seats, personally). But I just don't believe that there are institutional changes that exist that could make a truly just electoral system on a state level. I'm too much of a Foucauldian, I guess--the central state is never where justice is going to be instantiated in politics.

I actually think that two-round elections are good, though nowhere near as good as IRV, for choosing executives. The problem is when the field is too fractured, which was the case both in France in 2002 and in Egypt in 2012. But would a single round do any better there? The elected candidate would have nearly zero claim to represent the population in a case like that. High fracturing systems do better without an elected executive, but tell that to anybody writing a constitution for the last fifty years...