Democracy Is Bad: Difference between revisions

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* ''[[Star Wars]]'' provides numerous examples:

** Whether it was intentionally a jab at democracy or not (probably unintentional), the ''[[Star Wars]]'' prequels depict the Republic as "an ineffectual form of government highly prone to corruption, demagoguery and takeovers by radicals". (Which is a fairly accurate summation of the overall plot of Episodes I-III, come to think of it.) You have to give it some credit for lasting 25,000 years. During the Valorum administration, the Republic was not so much a democracy as the UN in space. Then Palpatine gave it an army.

** To be fair, its implied that the Sith had been secretly corrupting and sabotaging it for at least the previous ~~millenium~~, and they were responsible for numerous wars and catastrophes prior to that which, though they all failed, were all largely aimed at subjugating the Republic, if not outright destroying it and everyone therein. Palpatine himself engineered quite a lot of it as well.

** To be fair, its implied that the Sith had been secretly corrupting and sabotaging it for at least the previous millennium, and they were responsible for numerous wars and catastrophes prior to that which, though they all failed, were all largely aimed at subjugating the Republic, if not outright destroying it and everyone therein. Palpatine himself engineered quite a lot of it as well.

** On the other hand, it is depicted as being saved by tantamount to Greek-demigods-with-[[Laser Sword|Laser Swords]] about every time they want to sell a ''Star Wars'' novel.

* Pretty much every single work produced by a [[Those Wacky Nazis|Nazi German]], [[Fascist Italy|Italian fascist]], [[Useful Notes/Taiwan|Pre-1980s KMT]], [[Tsarist Russia|Czarist]], [[Imperial Japan|Japanese Imperialist]], Pre-1970s Spaniard, Islamist, or monarchist ever.

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* [[Tom Holt]]'s ''A Song For Nero'' features an allegorical aside in which a city-state tries to create the "perfect" system of government, by combining the best features of Athenian democracy (everyone gets a say) and oligarchy (rule by an elite). One suggestion is essentially modern democracy (you vote for the leaders, and then they're in total control for a certain period), which is derided as combining the ''worst'' elements of both. (Namely, that oligarchic elites spend all their time fighting each other for status, and leaders who are reliant on the will of the people give them what they want, not what they need.)

* It can start looking like this in [[H. Beam Piper]]'s ''Space Viking'', as we watch the democracy of Marduk collapse under the influence of the Hitler-esque politician Zaspar Makann (the main character actually researches Hitler to figure out what Makann is going to do next), but the eventual [[Aesop]] is actually that it just has a few bugs that need to be worked out.

** In the short story "Oomphel in the Sky," set about eight centuries before ''Space Viking'', a general is trying to deal with an impending natural disaster. The viewpoint character points out sardonically that he's being undemocratic about it, because he "knows what has to be done and how to do it, and he's going right ahead and doing it, without ... giving everybody a fair and equal chance to foul things up for him."

* In ''[[Mistborn]]'', after {{spoiler|the Final Empire is overthrown}}, the heroes form a constitutional monarchy to administer the city. Ultimately, the elected parliament promptly votes them out of office and sides with their enemies. [[What an Idiot!|In retrospect, Elend shouldn't have written that clause into his constitution.]] In the end, {{spoiler|he is forced to dissolve the government and declare himself emperor in order to save what's left of humanity}}.

* In an old story (probably pre-[[French Revolution]]) someone (probably a nobleman or such) tells a group of people who demand democracy a fable. Content: The animals set up a democracy. Then, the humans attacked. A part of the animals wanted to fight a war (like [[Panthera Awesome|the lion, the tiger]], [[Big Badass Bird of Prey|the eagle]], [[Everything's Worse With Bears|the bear]], [[Big Badass Wolf|the wolf]], and [[Cool Horse|the horse]]) but the great majority was too afraid and voted against it, thus there wasn't a war, the humans won easily and killed many animals. Yep, not only [[Democracy Is Bad]], but Pacifism Is Bad too. Anybody knows the name of the story, or the author?