perfidy

I was inspired to jot off most of the following in response to a comment over at Murdoc's place. It didn't have awhole lot to do with Murdoc's post, but the issue had been bouncing slowly through my skulljelly.

Hamas won, decisively, an election in Palestine. A lot of people have gotten their panties in a twist over it. This is perhaps to be expected, and really, we ought to rename our chattering classes the "panty-twisting classes." But it was also to be expected in the sense that after forty years of ardent radicalization of the Palestinians on the part of Yassir Arafat, that once a Fatah leader attempted to move even a little toward moderation someone one else would step in as the "real terrorist party" and quickly win the admiration of the people. It didn't help that aside from a new reputation for fecklessness in attacking the Jews, Fatah had a long standing reputation for bumbling, corruption, venality and treachery.

Hamas is of course a perfect fit for the "Real Terrorist Party," seeing as they are in fact real terrorists. The Palestinians know that Hamas will quite literally stop at nothing to kill Jews. And the Palestinians have been trained from birth to salivate at the sound of exploding Jews. Action, reaction.

There is a tendency in the West to fetishize elections. Many of us believe that in some magical way, receiving the lustration of a democratic election somehow makes the winner righteous, or at least sanctioned by a higher authority. That someone expresses the will of the people, and is annointed by the sacred oil of electoral victory is held to be an important thing. That this is beside the point should be too obvious to have to point out, but many very bad people have embodied the will of their people, and have used that mandate to wreak great evil on their neighbors or even the people whose will they embody.

Elections are an effect, not a cause of Democracy. Holding elections does not mystically transmute a grabastic collection of nihilistic refugees into a democratic nation requiring the respect and due deference of the civilized world. Even if it is an honest, rigorous and fair election.

As NDR pointed out in the comments to Johno's recent post, there is a long tradition of demagogues and worse exploiting the weaknesses of a democratic state. The Greeks invented democracy, and were therefore the first to allow it to devolve into tyrrany. The only defense against that is an educated and morally courageous citizenry - a citizenry that (at least for the most part) votes for what is right, not for what is expedient. Or worse, follows the dictates of base emotions at the instigation of the evil.

I don't know if Godwin's Law applies in this case, but Hitler won an election, too. Which is not to say that Hamas is like Hitler. Although it is. The thing is, "The People" in all its profound glory and unlimited sovereignty, can be profoundly and tragically wrong. As the Palestinians are today. We can understand why this came to pass - and I think that's fairly clear - but that doesn't mean that we have to accept the outcome. A leadership committed to genocide and hatred is not legitimate even if they come to power in a way that we ourselves use. It is not the form of the election that makes us what we are. (Or the British, Germans, Japanese, Indians, or whoever.) We have elections because we are free people living in a moderately just soceity.

The Soviets used to have elections to put a veneer of legitimacy on their tyranny. Elections in Palestine is just the means by which Hamas takes over the reins of power from an insufficiently violent and hateful Hamas. The Palestinians have not, I think, ever exhibited any of the qualities necessary for a real democracy to succeed. Electing Hamas shows that they value Hatred and Fear more than anything else.