The death of a salesman (or rather the death of a system of salesmanship)

Herald as one of the most enlightened ways of governance--the defeator, the truimph over foolish communism that betrays human nature and in born rights to liberty and freedom, the reason why there is a war going on in Iraq, the favourite word of Western politicians, being sprouted like ketchup to cover bad tastes of reality of dead soldiers and innocent civilians. A word loaded with politics, history, ideals, people's believes and their blood, A philosophy which promises so much but fails to live up to its overy own name.

Democracy will face its own death by its own hands. Sooner or later. It means so many things to so many people, twisted around fingers of politics, justice systems which pretend to uphold itself. IT means everything and sometimes that just might cover up the fact that it really means nothing.

I have always had this nagging feeling about recent develpments of democratic votes-- The past two presidential election in U.S, what is ongoing in Taiwan, Bush's war in Iraq to bring "democracy" whatever that means to him.

If the signs are not obvious enough, apparently democracy is now a inefficient and sometimes ineffective way to bring about decisions. The last two U.S presidential elections was won by a hair's breadth kind of margin, and it is not just in the U.S, it is happenign all over the world. People are crying out for democracy in not-yet-democratic countries, but in the alreaady suposedly democractic coutnires, voting results seem to anger half the population. Democracy, majority wins, works fine and wonderful if there is indeed a majority. MOreover, democracy assumes that the majority is enlightened. THE choice of the larger group of people should be by all means the better choice. There is no need for me to go further on how wrong that can be. But that itself is not the problem democracy seems to be facing,that assumption is embedded within the idea of democracy itself. The problem is that the 'majority' as an entity is slowly ceasing to exist, with the world becoming more divided by self-interest, different affiliation, more and more groups are emerging with no particular alliance to one another on a large front. It is not that the idea of democracy is dying, it still lives on well and fine even if it is parodied, made used of, abused and mocked. It is the idea of the majority, the group of people with a common interest and even as basic as a common choice when faced with two options which is dying out.

Politicians are finding it more and more difficult to draw people together, they take to a series of unrelated issues like cloning, abortion, going to war, to rally the various groups of people hoping to gain the support of the phantom majority. In the increasingly globalized world, and with people becoming mroe and more informed on their own sexual, religious, political,sceintific orientations. IT is gong to get increasingly harder to garner support over this wide range of population. Very soon, the scenarios will be one in which moves beyond supporters and opponents. Increasingly there are many moving to the middle ground. It is precisely in this gray area that democracy--which was never meant to handle and can never handle might eventually face its own demise.