We’re going through a time when the voters in democracies – old, new and quasi – are shooting themselves in the foot, or at least fingering the trigger: Revanchism in Russia; signs of defection and disaffection spreading throughout much of the EU, along with the growth of reactionary parties in France, Germany and Poland; last Sunday’s vote in Colombia to continue the civil war; the election of, or flirtation with, lunatic (or authoritarian) leaders in the Philippines and the U.S.

Some of the American Founding Fathers vehemently opposed direct democracy. They feared the consequences of an uninformed public formulating a country’s policy on a particular subject.

John Adams: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Alexander Hamilton had a deep fear of mob rule; James Madison argued for the need to protect the individual from what Edmund Burke called the “swinish multitude.”

More recently, Winston Churchill: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

That last quote particularly hits home to me as a result of some conversations I’ve had with a few neighbors here in Maine’s (very rural) 2nd Congressional District.

Having voted to elect and then re-elect the racist, clownish tea partier Paul LePage as governor, we’re now poised, according to a recent poll, to support Donald Trump, 48 to 34 percent. (The more urban and prosperous area around Portland, the 1st District, voted against LePage and is 50 to 28 percent for Hillary Clinton.)

Still, based on my sense of the underlying moral character of the American people, my intuition is that Trump will be rejected on Election Day.

If not, we’ll get what we deserve, and I’ll still enjoy the scenery and listening to my neighbors hooting and rooting for the Red Sox and the Patriots.

William Ullman

Mason Township

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