this is (roughly) what democracy looks like:

The radical Islamic group Hamas won 76 seats in voting for the first Palestinian parliament in a decade, election officials announced Thursday evening, giving it a decisive majority in the 132-member body and the right to form the next government. The long-ruling Fatah movement won 43 seats.

So, after the past few years of pushing for the region to embrace the trappings of democracy — in the case of Iraq, by force — we have an Iraqi government that is friendly to Iran & a palestinian authority that’s about to be run by Hamas. Nice.

Plain and simple: democracy without liberalism is just a majoritarian rubber-stamp to atrocity. This is what happens when we intervene in a culture we know nothing about, they zag when we expect a zig. Far as I’ve been able to tell, they think the problem with their society is that it’s somehow not “islamic” enough. The elite that run things use their faith as a shield for their own gluttony & ignorance. Thus, when they have an opportunity to change, they just veer wildly the opposite direction, having not thought about any other alternatives — the elite trying at least rhetorically to make peace? Vote for the ones calling for war! Past government was Arab Stalinists? Push for mullahs!

I think the most interesting thing about these outcomes is that, in a way, they kinda resemble us. We’ve been seeing things in polarizing terms & over-emphasizing religion too as of late. Of course, we have the cushion of past examples to point to, which is why for all the trouble we’ve brought about the sky isn’t falling. We have a secular root-politic of natural rights that we can cite when the skies go dark, what do they have?

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