We live democratically in an aristocracy

I think that the universal statement “Democracy” is an expectation of experience, and to justify it, its defenders resort to inductive inferences, as Karl Popper says, a “reasoning through which a proposition is considered true by its connection with others already considered as true; the proposition that is assumed to be true ”:

δῆμος (demos or “people”)

κράτος (kratos or “power”)

Therefore, δημοκρατία (dēmokratía or “government of the people”)

However, “in the political system of Classical Athens, democratic citizenship covered only men, children of an Athenian father and mother, free and older than 21, while foreigners, slaves and women were groups excluded from political participation.”

It is worth remembering that until the middle of the 19th century, universal suffrage — full right to vote for all adult citizens, regardless of literacy, class, income, ethnicity or sex, except for minor exceptions — was exclusively for men, thus keeping democracy in the hands of some of the people.

I explain that my point in this text, despite its importance, is not the participation of the people, but the rulers fantastically chosen to represent the people.

In 2017, the American newspaper The Hill cited a study that showed members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, also kept their families close.

In keeping with the American tradition, something so important in that country, the “Orange man” appointed his daughter and son-in-law to the President’s Advisers.

In the last Wonderland election 138 parliamentarians with family ties were elected in the first round.

The Queen of Hearts, declaring that she would appoint the hamburger cafeteria attendant to be a US Ambassador, due to the ties of pseudo friendship between the presidents, made it clear that she would do what was possible and impossible to benefit her family.

In England, “one in five deputies continues to employ a family member, using taxpayers’ money, despite the practice being banned for new members of Parliament [elected on 8 June 2017]”, according to the BBC .

According to a report in the newspaper El País, Spanish ministers did not speak out about a bill that could affect companies that had a friendly relationship (either by direct relationship or by family members).

Returning to Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts, maintaining her commitment to the government’s family support program, supported the candidacy of her three children, maintaining the political heritage contained in Brazil, as shown by the study carried out by the Inter-Union Advisory Department Parliamentary (DIAP):

“If you take the elected in Pernambuco, everyone is related, literally everyone. This is very characterized in the Northeast due to the phenomenon of coronelismo. You have a modern coronelismo, the guys own television, they have great fortunes, they own radio, they have great influence on the electorate influenced by the financial power of these families and oligarchies. This kinship relationship has a lot to do with the slavery period. It’s name, surname, you arrive in the interior of Brazil and people are known for their kinship. If you are rich then it has a lot more weight. In developed countries it does not exist, it is more on the periphery of developing countries, and in Brazil due to this contingent of people outside politics”, said political analyst and parliamentary advisor Marcos Verlaine, a member of DIAP.

In another study, DIAP demonstrated:

“That of the 123 pre-candidate parliamentarians as registered in a preliminary survey carried out by the entity, only 63 of them — 61 federal deputies and 2 senators of the Republic — who are in office confirmed their candidacy to run in the 2020 municipal elections. The majority or 59 they are candidates for mayor and 8 for vice mayor. ”

The Professor of the Department of Administration and Educational Supervision, Faculty of Education at Unicamp, Letícia Bicalho Canêdo, wrote the article “Family metaphors in the transmission of political power: questions of method”, which says the following:

“How to explain the use made by democratic society of a political vocabulary that works on the basis of allusions to the family as a principle of social reality? Updated by the media, these allusions (political godson, party parents, party inheritance, political heir…) offer a sparse view of the significance of democracy and reveal the possible existence of two theoretically irreconcilable spheres, where one takes place masking the other: ideas of democracy, modern party and elections concealing the signs of family, that is, of the social world in the political.”

It remains evident that the rotation in the Power practically does not exist and, therefore, the rulers not chosen by the people, but, yes, returned to the Power in a dynamic of maintenance of the status quo.

It is necessary to remember that democracy is an antonym for aristocracy, which is “the government of the best”, where political power is exercised by nobles, people of trust from Monarchs or Regents initiated in the philosophical and political view. ”

So, how long are we going to believe that there is democracy or that we live in a democracy?

*This text was originally published in the Journal of the Portuguese Language Scientific Community