Upping the Stakes DERRICK JENSEN
Democracy of Destruction
When the will of the people spells demise for the planet
THE UNITED STATES is not a democracy. It is more accurate to say we live in a plutocracy—a
government of, by, and for the wealthy — or
more accurate still, a kleptocracy —a government that has as its primary organizing principle theft, from the poor, from
the land, from the future. Yet somehow
we still often publicly speak and act as
though we do live in a democracy.
But there exists a deeper problem than
us not living in a democracy, an even
deeper problem than our inability to acknowledge that we don’t live in a democracy, which is that there’s a very real way
in which we do live in a democracy. And
the implications of this are very bad news
for the planet. The reason has to do not so
much with how we are governed as with
what we want, and what we do. If it’s true
that, as someone said long ago, by their
fruits ye shall know them, it quickly becomes clear that, to use my mother’s
phrase, the majority of people in this
country don’t give two hoots in a rain barrel about the health of the planet. Some
examples should make this clear.
Let’s start with tigers. Not real tigers,
not flesh-and-blood tigers, not tigers who
are being driven extinct in the wild. But
rather the Louisiana State University Tigers football team. Last January, when
LSU played Alabama for the college football championship, more than 78,000
people attended. The median ticket price
was $1,565, and some seats were reported
to have gone for as much as $10,000. The
region was so excited about this football
game that a number of schools closed in
celebration. And of course the television
audience was well over 24 million people.
It was the second most watched program
in cable television history.
All of which leads me to conclude that
more people in this country care about the
Tigers football team than living, breathing tigers. Obviously, you could make the
same argument about the Detroit Tigers,
Miami Marlins, Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, and on and on.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I like sports.
week after week to try to do something
about that same region’s Cancer Alley?
Another example: For one brief night a
couple of years ago the northern California
county where I live — Del Norte — became
a vibrant and shining example of participatory democracy in action. But it wasn’t
saving the redwoods or the die-o= of amphibians or dam removal that got people
to turn out en masse. It was a particularly
controversial domesticated plant. You
probably know that through popular vote
the state of California legalized cannabis
for medicinal use, and now the number of
allowable plants is determined county by
county. So when the Del Norte County supervisors were considering dropping that
If people collectively had to choose between iPods and mountain
gorillas, we know which they would (and do) choose.
But ultimately what we’re talking about
here is a game. Do you think we could
have gotten schools to close or 70,000
people to gather to help clean up Louisi-
ana’s beaches from the Gulf oil spill (and
do it week after week, as they do for LSU
football games, for New Orleans Saints
football games — as they do almost daily in
every city across the country for football,
baseball, basketball, and on and on)? Or
hell, do you think we could get schools to
close or more than 70,000 people to gather
number from ninety-nine to six, people
flooded the public input meeting and pre-
vented it from happening. This is how
participatory democracy is supposed to
work: public “representatives” are sup-
posed to carry out the will of The People,
and those who try to do otherwise get
voted out of o;ce.
