JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY

These two much bandied about terms evoke a similar response from everybody. In the courts, justice is the last thing any of us seek. What we want is to win our case. Justice is simply the least we're will to accept without crying foul.

Similarly, democracy is the least desired of all forms of government. But, a pluralistic society is full of competing factions seeking to gain control and impose their wills and agendas on everybody else. In order for such a contentious nation to function, the factions must establish a kind of truce. Democracy is acceptable because it is perceived as the least destructive of each faction's interests. Thus, democracy is a function of pluralism; it works because it is practical.

In the United States today that fragile truce is in great danger; practicality is losing way to ideology and greed. Clearly ascendant are agendas attacking values traditionally touted by Americans, equality, civil rights, and the virtues of different social, political, and economic perspectives. Leading this attack are religious fundamentalists and corporate millionnaires. Strange bedfellows.

A very different situation occurs in the Middle East where we are attempting to establish hegemony. There we are leading an agenda to set corporate greed in control of the society, but the indigenous people want a religious society. There, instead of cooperating as in the United States, corporate greed and religious fundamentalism conflict with each other. Separate beds arrangement.

We have tried to define our struggles in the Middle East as a war on terror. Maybe it is, but I'm less sure about that claim as time goes by. More interesting and important, it seems to me, is the role of terrorists in the struggle for control of the world. In the emerging war between established geopolitics and what for lack of a better name I'll call functional politics, who will win?