An Interactive Annotated Edition Identifying Logical Fallacies and Historical Misrepresentations
This page reproduces Curtis Yarvin's essay "Why I Don't Believe in Democracy" in full for purposes of criticism, commentary, and education, as permitted under 17 U.S.C. § 107 (Fair Use) of U.S. Copyright Law.
The extensive annotations, critical analysis, and interactive elements constitute transformative commentary that provides substantial educational value beyond the original work. This reproduction serves the public interest by teaching critical thinking skills and defending democratic principles.
Original essay by Curtis Yarvin. This critical analysis is non-commercial and does not substitute for reading the original work in its intended context.
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The other day I had lunch with an old friend, Erik, whom I hadn't seen in a few years. Erik is five or ten years older than me, has a philosophy degree from Berkeley, writes Internet standards for a living, and is generally a very stable, responsible and successful guy, unlike of course yours truly. He lives in Germany and is married to a German, and his politics are quite solidly progressive.
This establishes the basis for an ad hominem fallacy. By emphasizing Erik's credentials (philosophy degree from Berkeley, writes Internet standards, "stable, responsible and successful"), Yarvin is setting up a rhetorical frame where Erik's progressive politics are given weight not because of the arguments behind them, but because of who Erik is.
This is "credential mongering" — the implication that someone's professional accomplishments make their political views more credible. The inverse is also at play: Yarvin's self-deprecation ("unlike of course yours truly") positions himself as the underdog truth-teller against the credentialed establishment.
I was confident that I had informed Erik of this blog. But I think it got lost in a long email.
So I had the rare opportunity of really solidly failing to explain the point of UR.
"It's a neo-f—," I said. "Um, no, it's not really a neofascist hate blog. I just call it that
sometimes to shock people. It's a, what it is, is an anti-democracy blog."
"An anti-democracy blog. Well, that's certainly…"
"You've got to admit, it's an under-served market," I said.
"Well, I'd certainly agree with that."
"You've got to admit" is a rhetorical manipulation that combines several tactics:
The proper response: "Why do I have to admit that? What's your evidence?" This forces the speaker to actually support their claim instead of relying on rhetorical pressure.
Note also: Does he mean "unpopular"? "Under-served" implies a market failure. Has human history not provided adequate service to anti-democratic thought? Monarchies, dictatorships, and authoritarian regimes have dominated most of human history.
"Yeah," I said. "It was actually about a year and a half ago, I decided I didn't believe in
democracy anymore. It was great. Just like deciding not to believe in God."
"More like deciding not to believe in God about 250 years ago," Erik said. He actually said this.
I don't believe I've cut a single line from this exchange.
In fact, I had actually never thought of quite it this way. But yes—disbelieving
in democracy in 2008 is a lot like disbelieving in God in 1758.
This comparison implies that rejecting democracy is similarly bold, prescient, and intellectually enlightened as 18th-century atheism. The underlying suggestion: "Just as atheism turned out to be correct despite being unpopular, so too will rejecting democracy prove correct."
The analogy breaks down because:
Notice: He's flattering himself as a visionary rather than making an argument. Being unpopular doesn't make you right—flat-earthers are also unpopular.
For one thing, you disagree with basically everyone in your society. For another, your thoughts undermine the theory of legitimacy on which your government is founded. For a third, acknowledging your beliefs, let alone evangelizing them, is not exactly an effective way to make friends or influence people. And for a fourth, your original reason for believing in it was that when you were very small, grownups told you that it existed and was good.
He's listed four "reasons" but none of them are actually arguments against democracy:
Notice the pattern: He's listed four points but hasn't given a single reason why democracy is actually bad. This is all rhetorical setup—making anti-democracy views seem intellectually brave—without any substance.
Of course, the same could be said for disbelieving in, say, Australia. I am pretty confident that "Australia" is more or less what everyone thinks it is. I am not at all confident that the same can be said for "democracy." If you share similar suspicions, please feel free to read on.
The Australia comparison fails. Australia's existence is empirically verifiable:
Democracy is a system of governance—a set of practices, institutions, and norms. These are different categories entirely. You can't "visit" democracy, but you can observe and measure its outcomes, compare democratic vs. non-democratic societies, and evaluate its effects empirically.
The sleight of hand: He's suggesting democracy might be as illusory as a conspiracy theory about Australia being fake—without providing any reason to think so.
I had a very peculiar upbringing. I (a) had a father
who taught philosophy, then joined the US Foreign Service; and (b) skipped three grades before
high school. I was never acculturated in any discernible way into any tradition I could even
start to define. My father's parents were Great Neck communists and my mother's were Tarrytown
Republicans, but both these worlds had been soundly rejected. There was a bit of Whole Foods
avant la lettre, but small other trace of general hippieness. It was an almost Socratic upbringing.
We didn't even do Christmas trees. We believed in nothing.
And we never, ever had a TV. That was absolutely unthinkable. But I did read a lot of science
fiction—Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Harry Harrison, and of course Heinlein. My favorite, though,
was the great Hal Clement, who wrote what I still think may be the best SF novel ever. In the
pure literary department, there was always a lot of basically negative and unconstructive material
sitting around, including Mark Twain, Hunter S. Thompson, Jaroslav Hašek, and that great satirical
novel of the '70s, The Serial.
This is autobiography disguised as argument. Yarvin is trying to establish himself as uniquely qualified to critique democracy by claiming he was raised outside normal American ideological indoctrination.
The problems:
The name-dropping (Asimov, Heinlein, Hunter S. Thompson) signals intellectual sophistication but proves nothing. What's missing: Any actual argument about democracy's flaws. It's setup without payoff—the "payoff" is supposed to be that we trust him because of his background, not his reasoning.
I hasten to assert, however, that none of this included any kind of anti-democracy agitation.
And certainly nothing in any sense right-wing. My parents may not have been hippies, but they
weren't monarchists, either. They were civil servants. When we were in the US, we listened to
NPR. When we were outside the US, we listened to the BBC. The thought of tuning to VOA in the
latter, or any commercial radio station in the former, was impossibly gauche.
(In retrospect I'm sure VOA was easily as left-wing as the BBC, if not more. But it didn't
matter. The name was enough. And I'll bet the BBC was probably better, anyway.)
As you can see, there is a certain amount of contempt
in this perspective. This makes sense, because it's more or less the perspective of the global
ruling class. For example, the only real sport I learned as a kid was squash. When my father
was consul in Oporto, we would go to Le Meridien and play squash. At the time this struck me
as completely normal. I'm not sure where my father learned squash, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't
in Great Neck. Perhaps they teach it in the Foreign Service orientation class.
After distancing himself from right-wing associations (NPR, BBC, civil servants), Yarvin pivots to humble-bragging about his elite status: squash at Le Meridien, father as consul in Oporto, "the perspective of the global ruling class."
The rhetorical move: He positions himself as simultaneously inside the elite (so he understands how power really works) and above it (so he can critique it objectively). This is having it both ways.
Still missing: Any argument about democracy. We're now several sections deep into autobiography, credentials, and positioning—but he still hasn't explained what's wrong with democratic governance or what would be better.
I was introduced to America, the real America, in the following manner: I went from being an
11-year-old third-former in an ersatz British public school in Nicosia, to a 12-year-old
sophomore in a genuine American public school in Columbia, Maryland. I am still picking little
bits of Maryland out of my skull. (Of course, Columbia is not really Maryland proper—hence
the name. It ain't Frederick. But it's not Silver Spring, either.)
For example, the first thing I remember from my first year in Maryland was something called
a "pep rally." For those of you who did not attend
an American public high school, a "pep rally" is basically a straight ripoff of what Albert
Speer did at Nuremberg, except that (a) it is indoors, (b) there is not quite as much fire,
and (c) there is less saluting, more screaming, and about the same amount of chanting.
If you are an American raising kids abroad and you want to reintroduce them to your country,
I highly recommend this sort of shock-and-awe approach. Having to deal with an American high
school was not pleasant, but it gave me a certain respect for America: it exists. Once you
go to college, you are no longer in the real America. You are in a fortified outpost of future
America, which has been planted in the real America to enlighten and assimilate it. Respect
is not on the menu.
Comparing high school pep rallies to Nazi rallies at Nuremberg is a textbook example of reductio ad Hitlerum—the rhetorical move of comparing anything you dislike to Hitler or the Nazis.
Why it fails:
What this actually is: An intellectual finding a high school tradition annoying and reaching for the most inflammatory comparison possible. It trivializes Nazi atrocities while telling us nothing about democracy's merits or flaws.
Superficial similarities (crowds, noise, enthusiasm) exist between concerts, sporting events, political conventions, and religious services too. That doesn't make them equivalent to fascist rallies.
Perhaps for some distance I should deploy
my usual euphemism, "Plainland." Do you have any idea how weird a country Plainland is?
History still exists there. Nowhere
else in the world is there any significant political division whose heritage predates 1940.
Both Republicans and Democrats worship FDR, but Democrats worship him a little more. My mother's
mother now swears she voted for Kennedy in 1960. I know for a fact that she voted for Nixon. I'm
pretty sure they were FDR-haters. Not that the Old Right wasn't smashed, not that its particles
weren't broken into tinier particles, not that even a trace of it reached me in my formative
years. But some atoms survived, and you can tell.
In Europe, forget it. Europe was conquered in 1945,
but it was not conquered by Plainland. It was conquered by Georgetown. As I wrote here,
the ideas now popular in Europe are obvious descendants of what the most influential people at
State believed in 1945. The various so-called "parties" in Europe are mildly-flavored versions
of this belief system, which becomes completely homogeneous in the upper elite. Brussels has no
politics at all. It doesn't need it. The situation
is under control.
Yarvin introduces his own terminology without clear definitions. This is a rhetorical tactic that serves several purposes:
Glossary of Yarvin's terms:
Notice: he could just say "liberal elites" and "middle America" but that would sound like ordinary conservative culture-war rhetoric. The invented vocabulary gives it a veneer of original thinking.
Yarvin laments that no "significant political division" predates 1940, implying something valuable was lost. But what were those pre-1940 political traditions?
The post-1940 consensus emerged partly because those ideologies led to catastrophe. Lamenting their decline without acknowledging what they were is historical cherry-picking.
"Europe was conquered by Georgetown." "The situation is under control." This is ominous, evocative language that gestures at conspiracy without providing evidence or specifics.
The problems:
This is atmosphere-building—establishing contempt for modern politics—without making any argument about why democratic systems produce bad outcomes.
What Europeans call "anti-Americanism" is actually a belief, generally quite sincere, that
America is not living up to her own ideals of 1945. "Anti-Americanism" might be better described
as "ultra-Americanism," or perhaps "Georgetownism." And it certainly has nothing to do with
the any pre-1940 negative perceptions of America. There is minimal cultural continuity between
Europe before the war and Europe today. All the institutions were purged, all the individuals
have finally kicked it. The Dutch who let you smoke
weed in their cafes and the Dutch who ruled Indonesia might as well be on different planets.
The former are thoroughly ashamed that they are even descended from the latter. And the latter
are dead, which is probably a blessing.
So: my first political opinions were, of course, Georgetownist. I remember going to school in
Nicosia the day after Reagan was elected in 1984. I was terribly embarrassed. I felt that my
country had more or less taken a crap in its pants. To the Georgetownist, America exists so
that it can lead the world to democracy and peace. Obviously Reagan did not stand for either
of these things. He stood for Plainland and "pep rallies." Of course I knew little of either,
but I had a sense that they were out there, waiting.
This is a revealing moment. Yarvin frames it as cultural critique, but look at what he's actually saying:
What Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia actually involved: Forced labor, brutal suppression of independence movements, famines, and an estimated 4 million deaths during WWII occupation. Being ashamed of this seems... appropriate?
This reveals that the critique isn't just abstract "anti-elitism." He's lamenting that Europeans developed moral qualms about empire. The "cultural continuity" he misses includes the mindset that made colonialism possible.
Still not about democracy: None of this explains what's wrong with democratic governance. It's cultural grievance masquerading as political philosophy.
Here's how George Kennan, grand doge of the Georgetownists, expressed this conflict in a 1984 lecture, American Diplomacy and the Military (reprinted in American Diplomacy):
"No wonder, in the face of all this confusion, that our greatest mistakes in national policy seem to occur where the military factor is most prominently involved.
But I wonder whether this confusion is not compounded by certain deeply ingrained features of our political system. I am thinking first of all about what I call the domestic political selfconsciousness of the American statesman. By this I mean his tendency, when speaking or acting on matters of foreign policy, to be more concerned for the domestic political effects of what he is saying or doing than about their actual effects on our relations with other countries. In the light of this tendency, a given statement or action will be rated as a triumph in Washington if it is applauded at home in those particular domestic circles at which it is aimed, even if it is quite ineffective or even self-defeating in its external effects. When this is carried to extremes, American diplomacy tends to degenerate into a series of postures struck before the American political audience, with only secondary consideration being given to the impacts of these postures on our relations with other countries.
This situation is not new. We have only to recall Tocqueville's words, written 150 years ago, to the effect "that it is in the nature of democracies to have, for the most part, the most confused or erroneous ideas on external affairs, and to decide foreign policy on purely domestic considerations." Nor is this, in essence, unnatural. Every statesman everywhere has to give some heed to domestic opinion in the conduct of his diplomacy. But the tendency seems to be carried to greater extremes here than elsewhere.
Cherry-Picked Sources / Misrepresenting TocquevilleThis is the first time Yarvin cites substantive arguments—but he's misusing his sources.
What Tocqueville actually believed: Alexis de Tocqueville was a profound admirer of democracy. Democracy in America is largely a celebration of democratic society's strengths. His critiques were meant to strengthen democracy by identifying challenges to address—not to abandon it.
The key distinction:
- Tocqueville's approach: "Democracy has this weakness; here's how we should understand and address it."
- Yarvin's approach: "Democracy has this weakness; therefore democracy is illegitimate."
What's missing—comparison to alternatives: Do autocracies make better foreign policy decisions? History suggests not: Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin's purges of military leadership before WWII, monarchs who bankrupted kingdoms in vanity wars. Unaccountable leaders make catastrophic blunders too.
The irony: Democratic accountability constraining foreign policy might be a feature, not a bug. If leaders must answer to domestic opinion, they may be less likely to pursue reckless imperial adventures. Many would consider that a good thing.
This may be partly explained by the nature of the constituency to which the American statesman appeals. In the European parliamentary systems, the constituency is normally the parliament—because the ministry can fall from office if it loses parliamentary support. In our country, unhappily, the constituencies are more likely to consist of particularly aggressive and vociferous minorities or lobbies. These, for some curious reason, seem more often than not to be on the militaristic and chauvinistic side, either because there is some particular nation or ethnic group abroad which they want our government to support, or because they like to wrap themselves in the national emblem and beat the jingoist bell as a means of furthering their partisan purposes. American administrations seem to be particularly vulnerable … to just this sort of intimidation, presumably because they do not want to be placed on the defensive by being charged with lack of patriotism. And the effects of this are ones we have had occasion to note, both in connection with our policies in third world areas, such as Vietnam or Lebanon, and in connection with the problems of arms control and the relations among the great military powers.
If there is any substance to what I have just been saying, then this is simply further evidence for the fact, to which many wise observers besides Tocqueville have drawn attention, that our political system is in many ways poorly designed for the conduct of the foreign policies of a great power aspiring to world leadership.
The Irony: Critiquing Anti-Democratic Forces as "Democracy"Here's the deep irony: the problems Kennan describes—aggressive lobbies, wealthy special interests, militaristic minorities wielding outsized influence—are anti-democratic forces. They represent concentrated power distorting policy against the public interest.
What Kennan is actually critiquing:
- Lobbying by special interests
- Wealthy minorities with outsized influence
- Militaristic factions pushing for intervention
- Jingoistic pressure on politicians
These are symptoms of oligarchic capture—not democracy working as intended. The solution isn't less democracy; it's arguably more: campaign finance reform, transparency, reducing money in politics, strengthening genuine public accountability.
Also note: Kennan contrasts the U.S. system unfavorably with European parliamentary democracies. His critique is of specific American institutional design, not democracy itself. Yarvin conflates the two.
I, in any case, believe this to be true, and I consider that the trend of events in these recent years has revealed deficiencies in this system which even Tocqueville could not foresee.
What are we going to do about it? It would be naive of us to expect, or even to hope, that these features of our governmental system are going to be corrected within our time. To try to correct them abruptly might well do more harm than good.
In many respects, they represent the reverse side of the great coin of the liberties we so dearly cherish. And in this sense I see no reason why we should be ashamed of them. If this—our political system with all its faults—is the only way that a great mass of people such as our own, stretching from Florida to Alaska and from Maine to Hawaii and embracing individuals of the most diverse ethnic and cultural origins—if this is the only way such a mass of people can be governed without the sacrifice of their liberties—then so be it; and let us be thankful that such a possibility exists at all, even if it is not a perfect one.
The Source Contradicts Yarvin's ThesisThis is remarkable: Kennan is defending democracy, not attacking it. Read what he actually says:
- "the reverse side of the great coin of the liberties we so dearly cherish"
- "I see no reason why we should be ashamed of them"
- "let us be thankful that such a possibility exists at all"
- "the price we are obliged to pay for our liberties"
Kennan's actual argument: Yes, democracy has tradeoffs in foreign policy. But those tradeoffs are worth it because they come with liberty. The solution isn't to abandon democracy—it's to be humble and prudent about foreign commitments. Don't overreach abroad; accept that we can't solve every problem.
This is the opposite of Yarvin's thesis. Kennan is making a conservative defense of American democracy: accept imperfection, cherish liberty, practice restraint. Yarvin has quoted at length a source who fundamentally disagrees with him.
Either Yarvin hopes readers won't notice, or he's so committed to his framing that he can't see how badly this undermines his case.
But the one thing we can do, in the face of this situation, is to take a realistic account of this unsuitability of our political system for the conduct of an ambitious and far-reaching foreign policy, and to bear these limitations in mind when we decided which involvements and responsibilities it is wise for us to accept and which would be better rejected. Obviously, a number of the responsibilities we have already accepted, including some of the very greatest ones—NATO and our obligations to Japan, for example—represent solemn commitments of which we cannot divest ourselves at any early date.
There is nothing for us to do but to meet these commitments as best we can, recognizing that the peace and safety not just of our country but of much of the rest of the world as well depends on the way we meet them, and trying to place them, wherever we can, above the partisan political interests that every American administration is bound to have. But when it comes to the acceptance of new responsibilities, let us, at long last, try to bear in mind the limits of our national capabilities and the price we are obliged to pay for our liberties. Let us recognize that there are problems in this world that we will not be able to solve, depths into which it will not be useful or effective for us to plunge, dilemmas in other regions of the globe that will have to find their solution without our involvement.
This is not a plea for total isolationism, such as our grandfathers and great-grandfathers cultivated. It is only a request, if I may put it that way, for a greater humility in our national outlook, for a more realistic recognition of our limitations as a body politic, and for a greater restraint than we have shown in recent decades in involving ourselves in complex situations far from our shores. And it is a plea that we bear in mind that the interaction of peoples, just as in the interactions of individuals, the power of example is far greater than the power of precept, and that the example offered to the world at this moment by the United States of America is far from being what it could be and ought to be. Let us present to the world outside our borders the face of a country that has learned to cope with crime and poverty and corruption, with drugs and pornography. Let us prove ourselves capable of taking the great revolution in electronic communication in which we are all today embraced and turning it to the intellectual and spiritual elevation of our people in place of the enervation and debilitation and abuse of the intellect that the TV set now so often inflicts upon them. Let us do these things, and others like them, and we will not need 27,000 nuclear warheads and a military budget of over $250 billion to make the influence of America felt in the world beyond our borders."
Kennan's actual conclusion is a progressive democratic argument:
This is an argument for America to live up to its democratic ideals—to be a "city on a hill" that inspires through example. It's closer to progressive domestic policy than to anti-democratic reaction.
The irony is complete: Yarvin has quoted at length from a source whose conclusion is essentially "democracy is precious, we should be humble about our limitations, fix our own house, lead by example, and reduce militarism." This is the opposite of an argument for abandoning democratic governance.
Either Yarvin didn't read to the end, or he assumed his readers wouldn't.
Notice how Kennan lumps "drugs and pornography" alongside "crime and poverty and corruption" as if these are equivalent societal problems requiring the same type of solution.
The pornography inclusion is particularly telling:
This reveals cultural warfare masquerading as policy analysis- that society's problems stem from moral decay rather than structural issues like inequality, lack of healthcare, or failed drug policy.
This is a tell: when someone lists "pornography" as a national crisis equivalent to poverty, they're not doing policy analysis—they're doing culture war.
I can't imagine a better presentation of the Georgetownist worldview. Kennan was of course a
titan, and he delivered this text as a lecture to students of diplomacy who are no doubt
applying it today. It strikes me as completely sincere and thoroughly well-intentioned. It
contains many points of actual wisdom with which I even agree. It even criticizes democracy—sort of.
And yet it is a product of 1984. And the last 25 years have left some holes in it which, if
you look closely, do not wear well at all. To put yourself in the right mood for picking apart
these holes, let's take a look at this picture.
Notice the light shining through the curtains on the left and the right? What we see here is
a badly staged photo-op. Hollywood routinely shoots indoor night scenes during the day, but
they generally would put some black Mylar on the windows. For some reason this was not done,
and so the comedy is inadvertent.
Think about how many people had to screw up in order for this photo to make it to Time. Maybe
only three or four. But it is an invaluable "blooper," because it shows you something you
weren't supposed to see. The mechanism is visible. The film set appears. Crop an inch off the
left and right sides, and you see men meeting by candle-light—perhaps discussing some critical
decision, in a time of stress and hardship. Restore the curtain, and you have something much
more interesting.
What does this have to do with George Kennan?
The people who brought you that photo have the same worldview as Kennan. They are Georgetownists
to a T, every one. I guarantee it. So it seems quite reasonable to at least suspect that if
they are trying to pull the Mylar over your eyes, so is Kennan. Of course, "Salem Mohammed"
is no George Kennan, but even here at UR, we have to crawl before we can run.
After quoting Kennan at length—and having Kennan's own words contradict his thesis—Yarvin's response is remarkable. He doesn't engage with Kennan's arguments. Instead:
The fallacies:
The "mechanism" rhetoric: Notice the language—"the mechanism is visible," "the film set appears." He's priming readers to see "hidden mechanisms" everywhere. Find one minor inconsistency (daylight through curtains), treat it as evidence of grand deception, then apply that suspicion to everything. This is classic conspiracy-theory reasoning.
What he's avoiding: Kennan said democracy's flaws are "the reverse side of the great coin of the liberties we so dearly cherish" and that we should "be thankful" for the system. Yarvin never addresses this. Instead of rebutting Kennan, he gestures at a photo and implies deception.
This is the move of someone who has lost the argument on substance.
Here is the sun behind Kennan's curtain:
"In our country, unhappily, the constituencies are more likely to consist of particularly
aggressive and vociferous minorities or lobbies. These, for some curious reason, seem more
often than not to be on the militaristic and chauvinistic side, either because there is some
particular nation or ethnic group abroad which they want our government to support, or because
they like to wrap themselves in the national emblem and beat the jingoist bell as a means of
furthering their partisan purposes."
Suppose you heard this, not in 1984, but today. Would it strike you as an accurate description
of reality?
The "aggressive and vociferous minorities or lobbies"
certainly exist. They march in Dolores Park on a regular basis. What "particular nation or ethnic
group" do they support? Um, the Palestinians? Duh. By "national emblem," Kennan of course means
the kaffiyeh. Problem solved.
Not. Actually, if anything, he is thinking of the infamous "Israel lobby." I think I once saw
a pro-Israeli crowd in New York. It was maybe ten or twenty people. Of course, it wasn't
in 1984, either. On the other hand, when I think of "aggressive and vociferous" in 1984, what
I think of is the anti-apartheid divestment movement. Was there ever an anti-Palestinian
divestment movement? Promising not to invest in companies that do business with Arab states
that support Palestinian terrorism? Maybe I just missed it.
Of course, the "particular nations" that Kennan expects his audience to think of—the candles—are
the Cuban emigres, the Taiwanese, the South Vietnamese, etc. The "particular nations" he does
not expect us to think of—the sun behind the curtains—are the Palestinians, the Cuban socialists,
the Maoists, the North Vietnamese, etc. All of which have enjoyed the support of remarkably
large and influential "aggressive and vociferous minorities or lobbies."
Yarvin's "rebuttal" is to argue Kennan was talking about the wrong lobbies. But this actually confirms Kennan's thesis—that lobbying distorts foreign policy. He's just quibbling about which lobbies.
The fallacies:
Still not about democracy: Even if we accept his reframing entirely, this is a debate about which lobbies are influential—not an argument against democratic governance. He still hasn't made one.
Moreover, the second list is much longer. It includes essentially the whole Third World. And
the two lists could never be confused with each other. Sending the New York Philharmonic to
Pyongyang, in 2008, constitutes engagement. Sending the New York Philharmonic to Pretoria in
1984 would have been something else entirely.
Kennan's lecture made sense in 1984 because in 1984, Plainlander anticommunism was still a
viable political force. If barely. Today, to argue the same case, you would have to come up
with some kind of nonsense about anti-terrorist "aggressive and vociferous minorities." Who
are so aggressive and vociferous that they put yellow ribbons on their cars. Have you ever
seen or heard any trace of an anti-terrorist, let alone anti-Islamist or anti-jihadist, march,
parade, meeting or demonstration? Are our colleges full of anti-Islamofascist Cheneyite activists?
The suggestion is laughable, and Kennan would be too smart to make it.
What hindsight shows us is that Kennan was projecting.
He and his audience genuinely perceived themselves as beset by a mob of pitchfork-wielding
Plainlander peasants. When Dean Acheson, Kennan's boss and a truly devious and arrogant man,
wrote his autobiography, he called his chapter on the Hiss affair "Attack of the Primitives."
I don't think Kennan would ever be so crude, but the attitude is certainly the same.
But when we step back and take a broader view, we see easily that these "militaristic and
chauvinistic minorities" were stronger—in terms of their influence over decisions in Washington—in
1924 than 1934, stronger in 1934 than 1954, stronger in 1954 than in 1964, stronger in 1964
than in 1974, and so on right down to now. With a brief exception, for obvious reasons, in 1944.
On the other hand, we could easily take the series back to 1844. North America is not exactly
new to militarism and chauvinism.
"Kennan was projecting." Rather than engage with Kennan's arguments, Yarvin psychoanalyzes him—claiming Kennan and his peers were deluded elitists who imagined themselves "beset by pitchfork-wielding Plainlander peasants."
The problems:
What's still missing: An argument against democracy. He's spent the last several sections trying to discredit Kennan personally rather than explain what's wrong with democratic governance or what would be better.
And where the heck is the John Birch Society today? If the "Primitives" are indeed "attacking,"
they are doing an awfully bad job of it. Because they seem to be going in reverse.
On the other hand, this state of affairs is not at all inconsistent with the hypothesis that
their actions (often quite hostile) are actually best classified not as aggression, but more
properly as resistance. "Cet animal est très méchant: quand on l'attaque, il se défend."
This is how Kennan can sacralize democracy while castigating politics. He has seen, personally,
a wide range of problems caused by clumsy attempts to execute a foreign policy which is somehow
both Primitive and Georgetownist. He knows perfectly well that, in almost every post-1945
military conflict, Primitives have lined up on one side of the ball and Georgetownists on the
other. In fact, he knows that there is a huge nest
of Primitives right on the other side of the Potomac. (Perhaps, for balance, we could call them
Arlingtonists.)
Kennan's words are deftly chosen, but he means exactly what he says. He has seen innumerable
screwups and disasters, wars and tragedies, caused by this organizational schizophrenia. In fact,
in a substantial percentage of postwar conflicts, Georgetownists have been rooting for one side
and Arlingtonists rooting for the other. Sometimes rooting isn't all they do, since the
Arlingtonist specialty is, after all, war. So quite a few of these little events could be
described, by a malicious and negative person, as civil wars by proxy. Which is—let's face
it—nasty.
It is entirely understandable that Kennan, being
more or less the Georgetownist to end all Georgetownists, would believe that, if Washington had
followed a purely Georgetownist foreign policy without Arlingtonist meddling, none of these
awful things would have happened. As a counterfactual, the point is irrefutable. And also
unverifiable. And there's certainly no shortage of Arlingtonists who believe precisely
the opposite.
And, as a wise elder statesman, here is his solution: learn to live with the Primitives now,
and do your best to evangelize them out of existence. Win your battle domestically, "elevate"
your subjects "spiritually and intellectually," and you will be able to pursue your Georgetownist
visions of global democracy and world peace without
a bunch of Birchers carping about homosexual communist "rock music."
This closing line is doing a lot of work:
"Homosexual communist rock music": Lumping homosexuality, communism, and rock music together as threats is pure culture war grievance. It's a moral panic red herring with zero connection to democratic governance. It's the same move as earlier mentions of "drugs and pornography"—just throwing inflammatory terms together.
"Birchers": The John Birch Society were far-right conspiracy theorists who saw communist plots everywhere, opposed civil rights, and were considered extreme even by conservative standards of their era. By positioning them as reasonable critics being unfairly suppressed, Yarvin reveals his sympathies: he's defending far-right extremists as legitimate political voices.
What's he actually doing? Building a narrative where the establishment is trying to eliminate conservative opposition using cultural issues (gay rights, rock music) as weapons. But he never connects this to his thesis. How does cultural change or bureaucratic infighting argue against democratic systems? It doesn't.
We now have three layers of invented vocabulary:
Each new term creates more gatekeeping. Readers must learn Yarvin's private vocabulary to follow his argument—and once they've invested that effort, they're more likely to feel like insiders who "get it."
In plain English, he's saying: "The State Department and the Pentagon sometimes disagree about foreign policy." This is... not a revelation. And it's still not an argument against democracy.
A remarkable admission: his counterfactual is "irrefutable... and also unverifiable."
This is the hallmark of unfalsifiable reasoning. If a claim can't be verified or disproven, it's not an argument—it's speculation dressed as insight.
He's also straw manning Kennan: Yarvin tells us what Kennan "would believe" and what his "solution" is—putting words in Kennan's mouth rather than engaging with what Kennan actually wrote. Kennan's actual conclusion (which we read in [13]-[14]) was about humility, restraint, and leading by example—not "evangelizing Primitives out of existence."
Still not about democracy: This entire section is about intra-elite factional fights (State vs. Pentagon). Even if his framing were accurate, it wouldn't explain what's wrong with democratic governance or what alternative would be better.
The reason Kennan likes Europe is not just that parliamentary systems are more apolitical—it is that Europe has no organized Primitives. Thanks to its postwar can of whoop-ass, Europe is way ahead of us in its Georgetownist Gleischaltung. Nothing like the Republican Party of 2008 would be tolerated in Europe today, let alone the Republican Party of 1984. (And if you want a real trip, find some of Governor Reagan's speeches from the '60s.)
What happened in Europe was that its entire intellectual operating system was reinstalled. There were Arlingtonists in Europe, and not all of them were Nazis. And it wasn't just Germany that got reprogrammed. Europe has spent the last fifty years abolishing a set of perspectives that constituted the entire mainstream political spectrum in 1900. It is only Plainland that was not completely conquered by the Georgetownists. And it is far more conquered now than it was in 1984.
"Gleichschaltung" is the literal Nazi term for forced political coordination—the process by which the Third Reich brought all institutions under Nazi control. He's using Nazi vocabulary to describe post-WWII European liberalization.
What he's actually lamenting: "Europe has spent the last fifty years abolishing a set of perspectives that constituted the entire mainstream political spectrum in 1900."
What were those 1900 perspectives? Colonialism, racial hierarchy, nationalism that led directly to two world wars and the Holocaust. Europe didn't eliminate "mainstream views"—it eliminated genocidal totalitarianism after experiencing its consequences firsthand.
The mask slips: He's mourning that fascism, ultra-nationalism, and far-right politics were discredited after WWII. "Not all of them were Nazis" is doing a lot of work here—he's defending the broader ecosystem of far-right thought that produced Nazism.
Is he suggesting keeping fascism around would have been better? This is the closest he's come to revealing what he actually wants.
So we have completely reframed the story that Kennan is trying to tell. Instead of the struggle of a decent public servant against chauvinist demagoguery, we have the struggle of a Machiavellian bureaucrat to govern the world and abolish his enemies. Which of these stories is truer? Neither. Both are completely consistent with the facts. History is always the Necker cube. (It would help, though, if we knew whether Kennan ever owned a long-haired cat.)
And notice one thing that we have not learned about the struggle between the Arlingtonists and the Georgetownists, the Primitives and the Brahmins. We have learned who won and is still winning. We have learned that at least one side is willing to tell a lie or two, or at least shade the truth—hardly shocking in the twentieth century. What we haven't learned is who was right and who was wrong. In fact, maybe they're both wrong.
The "Necker cube" metaphor is clever but dishonest. He's claiming we can't determine which narrative is true—but we actually can evaluate outcomes:
The false equivalence: He's equating:
These are not morally equivalent positions to dismiss with "maybe they're both wrong."
Still no argument against democracy: He's described ideological change and bureaucratic power struggles, then suddenly implied this means democracy is bad. But he never explains the connection. How does "State Department vs. Pentagon" prove democratic governance is illegitimate? It doesn't.
And this is how I stopped believing in democracy. Let's go back to the God analogy.
"This is how I stopped believing in democracy." But he still hasn't given us a reason to stop believing in democracy.
This far into the essay, what have we actually learned?
What he has NOT shown:
He's saying "this is how I stopped believing" about a conclusion he hasn't argued for. The essay's title promises to explain why he doesn't believe in democracy. We're still waiting for the actual argument.
What's amazing about the whole God thing is that people actually used to believe in God. Almost no one believes in God today. The most they are willing to give Him is that he "exists." Perhaps there is a Heaven and maybe even a Hell. But before you find people who actually believe that God actually uses His alien black-magic superpowers to actually affect events on Earth, you have to scrape pretty deep in the barrel. We are all deists now.
"Almost no one believes in God today" is demonstrably false:
"We are all deists now" — No evidence provided. This contradicts observable reality: prosperity gospel, charismatic Christianity, Islamic practice, Hindu devotion, answered prayer traditions across faiths. Billions of people actively believe God affects their lives.
The strawman: He's redefining "belief in God" to mean only belief in "alien black-magic superpowers"—a reductive characterization. Then he claims "real" belief is rare. This is moving the goalposts mid-argument.
His claim contradicts documented global religious demographics. The foundation for his God/democracy analogy is factually incorrect.
Before this change, there was an entire branch of philosophy called theodicy, whose goal was to figure out how God and evil could coexist. Doesn't it strike you as completely and utterly obvious that the answer is "they don't"? Why didn't all these incredibly smart people—Aquinas and Leibniz and Pascal and so forth—just consider the null hypothesis?
"Doesn't it strike you as completely and utterly obvious?"
This is the same pressure tactic as "you have to admit" from [2]. It's not an argument—it's an assertion dressed as a rhetorical question. If the answer were obvious, there wouldn't be millennia of sophisticated philosophical debate.
Dismissing Aquinas, Leibniz, Pascal as simpletons:
He claims they didn't "consider the null hypothesis." This is false. Aquinas literally structured his Summa Theologica by presenting objections— including atheistic arguments—before refuting them. These philosophers explicitly engaged with the case against God's existence.
Theodicy has sophisticated arguments: the free will defense, soul-making theodicy, the greater good defense. Yarvin doesn't engage with any of them. He just asserts the answer is "obvious" and moves on.
The analogy still fails: God's existence is a metaphysical question (true or false regardless of what we believe). Democracy's value is a normative and practical question (depends on outcomes, alternatives, values). These aren't comparable. He's treating governance like theology to make abandoning democracy seem "enlightened."
I think the answer is that when you really believe in God, the belief that God is good and makes good things happen is completely woven into your cerebral cortex. If you were to stop believing in God, you would instantly solve the problem of explaining all the evil things that have happened in the world. You would also instantly create the problem of explaining all the good things that have happened. For which your present explanation is that they happened because they were good, and therefore God wanted them to happen.
"Completely woven into your cerebral cortex" is pseudo-intellectual hand-waving. He's trying to sound scientific while making an unfalsifiable psychological claim.
What he's actually saying: "Believers can't think clearly because belief is too embedded in their brains." But he provides no evidence for this claim. It's an ad hominem: dismiss opposing views by claiming opponents are neurologically compromised.
This is the rhetorical equivalent of "you only disagree because you're brainwashed." It's not an argument—it's a way to avoid engaging with arguments.
Similarly, as a kid raised on the IHT and The Economist and other Georgetownist goodness, I had a simple, pretty explanation of the world. There were two kinds of governments: democratic ones and undemocratic ones. The first kind were good and the second kind were bad. History was the story of humanity's progress from bad, undemocratic governments to good, democratic ones. The rest was all details.
He's presenting democratic theory as childishly simplistic: "democratic = good, undemocratic = bad."
But serious democratic theorists acknowledge nuance:
Nobody credible argues that democracy is a simple good/bad binary. He's constructing a naive version of democratic theory so he can knock it down.
Also note the continued autobiography: his childhood reading of The Economist is somehow relevant to whether democracy works. It isn't.
One can certainly arrange the facts in this way. But, first, history is not a list of facts. And second, when we do arrange the facts in this way, we find that we have a number of facts left over, which require additional explanations. Of course these explanations can be assembled. Pretty much any theory of history can explain pretty much any fact. However, the more patches of this sort you have to apply, the more you miss your simple, pretty story.
"Facts left over" — which facts? He never specifies. This is argument by assertion: "There are problems with democratic theory" (but I won't tell you what they are).
The "patches" false standard: He implies that needing to explain complexity means a theory is failing. But all theories require nuance:
The self-defeating admission: "Pretty much any theory of history can explain pretty much any fact."
This applies to his theory too! If any theory can explain any fact, then his anti-democratic framework is equally unfalsifiable. He's accidentally admitted that his own argument has no more explanatory power than what he's criticizing.
And there is an even more upsetting observation, which is that the process of explaining why democracy isn't perfect is remarkably similar to good old theodicy. Perhaps we could call it demodicy—the problem of explaining how democracy can coexist with evil.
Why is "coexisting with evil" a problem unique to democracy?
Every political system must coexist with evil because evil exists in the world. This isn't a problem specific to democracy—it's the human condition.
The clever neologism "demodicy" makes it sound like he's identified something profound. He hasn't. His entire analogy collapses here.
Perhaps you've noticed that democracy has not exactly worked out perfectly in Iraq. Oh, there were elections. Elections, sure. But after the elections, did Iraq turn into Belgium? Um, no. How can we explain this? Almost any way we want:
"Did Iraq turn into Belgium?" — This sets an unrealistic standard.
Iraq in 2003:
Expecting it to "turn into Belgium" after holding elections is not a serious critique of democracy—it's a straw man. Nobody credible claimed elections alone would instantly transform a war-torn, occupied country.
This is actually an argument against American military intervention and nation-building, not against democratic governance as a system.
"Too stupid for democracy" — This is scientific racism, presented casually in a list as if it's just another explanation.
The problems:
He slips this in casually, but it reveals a lot. The "IQ and democracy" argument is a staple of white nationalist discourse.
And on and on and on. For each of these we can construct examples, counterexamples, refutations, rebuttals, and in short an entire tangle of scholastic philosophy. Classic demodicy.
He presents these explanations as if they're "excuses" or embarrassing "patches" to democratic theory. But they're actually the answer:
These aren't flaws in democratic theory—they're realistic acknowledgments that context matters.
Dismissing nuance as "scholasticism" is like saying: "Cancer has many causes (genetics, environment, lifestyle), therefore oncology is just scholastic nonsense!" Complex phenomena have multiple contributing factors. That's not a weakness—it's reality.
Or let's look at another example: democracy in South Africa. Of course by "democracy" I mean multiracial democracy. It is not okay to have an election in which only white people can vote. It's actually worse than having no elections at all. It's a sort of blasphemy, like appointing your horse to the Senate, electing a crack whore as Pope, or giving Pol Pot the Nobel Peace Prize.
This passage is rhetorically slippery. Read it carefully:
He compares white-only elections to "blasphemy"—listing extreme examples like "appointing your horse to the Senate" or "electing a crack whore as Pope."
But what's the implication? Is he saying:
The crude language ("crack whore") and bizarre comparisons create plausible deniability. He can claim he's criticizing apartheid while his tone suggests mockery of those who care about racial equality.
Of course this was absolutely huge when I was in college. It was by far the most important thing in the world. I think if God had told the average male student at my college that, if he agreed to remain a virgin for life, democracy would come to South Africa, he would have instantly agreed. And in 1994, a miracle! No virginity required. Even the evil white people voted for it.
He reduces opposition to apartheid to naive college student enthusiasm—and mocks it with a juvenile "virginity" joke.
What was apartheid actually?
This wasn't college kids getting excited about a trendy cause. Millions of people suffered. The anti-apartheid movement included Black South Africans risking their lives, international trade unionists, religious leaders, and yes—students who recognized injustice.
Reducing this to "they would have given up sex for it" trivializes a serious human rights struggle.
Note the scare-quote tone around "evil white people." This framing suggests:
The apartheid regime's record is documented: it classified humans by race, stripped rights from the majority, used violence to maintain minority rule, and committed atrocities. The moral condemnation is proportionate to the facts.
Setting up a bait-and-switch: Based on his pattern, he's about to argue that post-apartheid South Africa has problems—and imply this means the activists were naive and democracy "failed." But this ignores:
Recently, something interesting happened in South Africa. The power went out. Apparently this is not a temporary or accidental development. South Africa will have rolling blackouts for the next few years. Not a small issue in a place where ordinary life as you or I know it depends on extreme security systems and armed response teams. Here is a thread in which people like you and me debate whether or not to flee the country. Here is a sample:
Here comes the bait-and-switch we predicted: point to problems in post-apartheid South Africa and imply democracy caused them.
What he's not mentioning:
The implicit argument: "South Africa has problems → democracy failed." But this requires showing democracy caused the problems, not just that problems exist in a democracy.
I myself am deciding to leave, but I have other commitments at the moment that don't allow me to. But in time, I will. I have been involved in crime as well, and almost everyone I know has been touched by crime in some way. It used to be a case when we read articles in the newspapers about crime, now it's a case of hearing it happening to someone close to you. I myself, have been mugged twice, stabbed 3 times, once in the lung, and hit on the head… while I was a student who just started writing my final exams. Thereafter another incident and I was beaten up repeated and landed in hospital. A close friend of mine was killed while outside a fast food store, waiting for his order. When does it stop? I agree, we are so used to hearing about crime, that it has become the norm. Our country is full of it! There's no place left in our daily papers to add in all the stories. Killings and rapes are now moved to page 3 or 4. Front page is now set aside for the most gruesome or horrific stories. Shock sells, and it's getting harder to shock our nation because violent crime is now also the norm. Yet, in countries abroad, where violent crime is not witnessed on a daily basis, a story of a missing dog could easily be placed on the front page. Is there hope for SA? I honestly don't know. But we are in big trouble. I also was optimistic—but now I realise no one will help us—the government doesn't give a damn. The corruption and power crises is another story on it's own. If everyone that could afford to leave—left, what then? Some of my friends, and I have been saving for the past year, not to buy a new car (which will be hijacked and taken away), but to leave. Like the government said… leave if we want… If they won't help us—we should help ourselves.
This is one anonymous forum post. It's not evidence that democracy caused South Africa's crime problem.
What would actual evidence look like?
What actually causes South Africa's crime?
These are apartheid's consequences—not democracy's. Attributing problems to democracy when they originate from the system democracy replaced inverts the causal relationship.
I do not witness violent crime on a daily basis. I have never seen a story of a missing dog on the front page. In fact, I have never been stabbed anywhere at all, not even in the lung.
He contrasts his own experience with the forum poster's—but the comparison he's implying is incomplete.
What he's comparing:
What he's NOT comparing:
The alternative he won't name: If democracy is the problem, what's his proposed solution? Return to apartheid? A new authoritarian regime? He never specifies—which makes it impossible to evaluate whether his alternative would actually produce better outcomes.
Still no causal mechanism: He never explains HOW democracy causes crime. Is it elections? Universal suffrage? Constitutional rights? Without identifying a mechanism, this is correlation presented as causation.
However, I was in a bookstore the other day and found a pile of Napa Journals from May 1940. This was a broadsheet rag put out in Napa, CA. On one, the top headline was that the Nazis had invaded France. There were some other stories of a similar nature. And down near the bottom, but definitely on the front page, the Journal saw fit to inform its readers that the police had arrested a man who was wanted for passing a bad check in Fresno. Hm.
The implied comparison: In 1940 Napa, a bad check arrest made the front page. In modern South Africa, violent crime is so common it's buried on page 3-4. Therefore... something about democracy?
The logical problems:
The "Hm" suggests profundity, but this comparison proves nothing about democratic governance.
In any case, while poking around for news on the subject I stumbled on a little blog called "SA Rocks." From its about page:
After reading the incredibly upsetting anti-SA blogs from expats around the world I decided to make a stand. This blog is that stand. I am standing up for all the good in SA. For all the great things that SA citizens do and for all the people who love this country. I love this country and I believe in it and the success that is soon to come.
SA Rocks is not a website dedicated to blindly praising South Africa. I understand that every country has flaws and I do not deny the flaws of South Africa. I do feel that there are enough people who berate our country and it's time for people to start acting and thinking positively about South Africa.
Indeed. My attention was immediately drawn to this post, which has to be seen in context. This one is good, too. Demodicy in its purest and most desperate form.
The SA Rocks blogger explicitly states: "I understand that every country has flaws and I do not deny the flaws of South Africa."
This is a nuanced position: acknowledge problems while also highlighting positives. Yet Yarvin dismisses it as "demodicy"—his invented term for making excuses for democracy's failures.
The logical issue: He's not engaging with the blogger's actual argument. He's labeling patriotism and hope as a logical fallacy without demonstrating why optimism about South Africa is irrational or why democracy specifically is to blame for the country's challenges.
Dismissing an opposing view by categorizing it (rather than refuting it) is not an argument.
I shouldn't make fun of these people. They really, really don't deserve what is happening to them. No one deserves to be stabbed, especially not in the lung. But the question remains: did someone make a mistake? Did they do X, when in retrospect they should have done Y? And was believing in democracy part of their motivation for doing X? What does it even mean to believe in democracy, anyway?
Loaded question: A question that presupposes something unproven. His questions assume that:
What "Y" is he implying? He never says. The alternatives to ending apartheid were:
By framing "believing in democracy" as the potential mistake without specifying what the alternative should have been, he implies a conclusion he hasn't argued for and can't defend explicitly.
Hopefully we have now passed the point of mere skepticism. We are ready to reason in a structured and sensible way. At this point I recommend that you take a break from the essay, and have a beer or two, or other beverage of choice. Have to keep those neurons loose.
"Passed the point of mere skepticism": This assumes his previous content established grounds for skepticism about democracy. It did not. We've seen:
"Keep those neurons loose": After this buildup, he suggests impairing critical thinking ("have a beer or two") before presenting his "structured" argument. This is the opposite of how rigorous analysis works.
There are two pertinent questions. One: what does it mean to believe in democracy? Two: if you don't believe in democracy, what do you believe in?
As I see it, there are two ways you can believe in democracy. One, you can believe in democracy as an end—that is, as a goal which is good in and of itself. Two, you can believe in democracy as a mechanism by which some other goal can be achieved.
He presents two options as if they're mutually exclusive. But most democratic theorists hold both positions:
By forcing a choice between these, he can dismiss one half and then attack the other, avoiding the full case for democracy.
If you believe in democracy as an end in itself, I really cannot help you. You might as well believe in, say, water polo, as an end in itself. It is impossible to reason about ethical axioms.
The water polo comparison: This is a false equivalence. Many philosophers argue democracy has intrinsic value grounded in substantive principles:
These aren't arbitrary preferences like "water polo is good." They're grounded in moral philosophy about human worth and agency.
"It is impossible to reason about ethical axioms": This dismisses an entire field. Meta-ethics exists. Philosophers compare axioms' implications, coherence, and intuitive appeal. Kant, Rawls, Nozick, and others have devoted careers to reasoning about ethical foundations.
His position amounts to: "If you disagree with my framing, we can't discuss it, so I win by default." That's not reasoning—it's refusing to engage.
I think most sensible people who believe in democracy see it as a mechanism. Or more precisely, as a remedy.
"Most sensible people": This is proof by assertion. He provides no evidence for this claim. The phrasing implies that anyone who disagrees—who believes democracy has intrinsic value—is not "sensible."
This is a form of the No True Scotsman fallacy: defining the group ("sensible people") to exclude those who would contradict his claim.
What he's setting up: By narrowing debate to "democracy as mechanism only," he can:
Looking at history, they note that there are two kinds of governments: good ones and bad ones. Misgovernment is an extremely dangerous condition, and when we look at democracies we see that they are not, in general, misgoverned. Ergo, democracy, i.e., the process of holding elections which are basically free and fair in a multiparty state with a free press and all the rest, is a remedy for misgovernment, much as salvarsan is a remedy for syphilis.
"They note": Who is "they"? Historians? Political scientists? He provides no citations, no names, no evidence. This is an appeal to anonymous authority.
"Two kinds of governments: good ones and bad ones": This is a false dichotomy. Governments exist on multiple spectrums:
Mixed systems exist: democratic but corrupt, authoritarian but effective at certain goals, etc. Reducing political systems to a binary is an oversimplification that obscures rather than clarifies.
"Democracies are not, in general, misgoverned": This is stated without evidence. By what metrics? Compared to what baseline?
"Ergo, democracy is a remedy": Even if we accept that democracies tend to be well-governed (unproven), this commits the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (after this, therefore because of this):
This doesn't follow logically. Correlation does not establish causation. Perhaps well-governed societies are more likely to become democratic, or perhaps other factors (wealth, education, institutions) cause both.
Note: He's presenting what he claims is the pro-democracy argument—but this is a simplified version he can easily attack. Actual democratic theory is more sophisticated.
Why salvarsan? Salvarsan was the first effective treatment for syphilis (1910), but it was imperfect—toxic, with significant side effects, eventually replaced by penicillin.
He could have said "much as penicillin is a remedy for infection" or "much as vaccines prevent disease." Instead, he chose an obsolete, flawed treatment.
The framing:
This analogy also assumes we should judge democracy solely on whether it "cures" misgovernment—ignoring intrinsic values like dignity, equality, and self-governance that he dismissed in the previous section.
Our problem here is that we are thinking empirically, which is to say pseudoscientifically. History is not an experiment, because we cannot control it. If we were testing a remedy for syphilis, we would assemble two groups of syphilis patients who were the same in every possible way, except that one got the remedy and the other didn't. We cannot do this for democracy. There are no control governments.
"Empirically" does not mean "pseudoscientifically."
What "empirically" actually means:
Empirical observation is how science works. Claiming that thinking empirically is "pseudoscientific" inverts the meaning of both terms.
He's setting a standard that only randomized controlled experiments count as valid knowledge. But this would invalidate vast areas of legitimate science:
Medical discoveries from observational studies:
Valid social science methods:
Political science uses these methods routinely. Claiming we can learn nothing without "control governments" ignores established methodology.
Uncontrolled or "natural" experiments produce misleading results. If the way we test our syphilis remedy is just to sell it, then see if the people who buy it do better than the people who don't, we are simply finding ways to confuse ourselves. Perhaps patients who have mild syphilis are more likely to try the pill those with tertiary paresis. Perhaps it's not that elections create good governments, but that good governments are more likely to hold elections. By compiling the facts of history and expecting some objective algorithm to magically arrange them in the most plausible narrative, we think we are being scientific. In fact we have only rediscovered artificial stupidity.
His own salvarsan analogy undermines this claim. Salvarsan's effectiveness was partly established through uncontrolled observation before controlled trials existed.
If natural experiments "produce misleading results," then by his logic we couldn't have known:
His standard, if accepted, would make his own anti-democracy claims equally unfounded—he's also relying on historical evidence without controlled experiments.
This is actually a legitimate methodological concern: reverse causation (also called endogeneity). Perhaps good governance causes democracy rather than vice versa.
However: Political scientists are aware of this problem and use techniques to address it:
The evidence suggests bidirectional causation: democracy improves governance, AND good governance supports democracy. This doesn't invalidate either direction.
"Artificial stupidity" is a dismissive phrase, not an argument. If we cannot learn from historical evidence compiled through rigorous methods, then:
This is a form of radical skepticism that undermines his own position. If empirical evidence about democracy is "artificial stupidity," on what basis does he claim democracy doesn't work?
Moreover, any such narrative will probably be replete with exceptions, which leads us back into demodicy. Iraq is a democracy and it's a hellhole. Dubai, right next door, is a monarchy, and it's about as pleasant as anywhere in the Persian Gulf could get. Why? Again, we can supply as many explanations as may be required.
Iraq:
Dubai:
Examples he ignores:
Comparing post-invasion Iraq to oil-rich Dubai proves nothing about democracy vs. monarchy as systems.
He frames contextual analysis as making excuses ("we can supply as many explanations as may be required"). But context is how causal analysis works.
The alternative: Should we ignore that Iraq was invaded? That Dubai has oil wealth? That historical circumstances differ?
Acknowledging complexity ≠ making excuses. One counterexample doesn't disprove a general pattern. The relevant question: which system performs better on average, controlling for relevant variables?
And worst, we are not really thinking from scratch. We are starting with our conventional proposition, that democracy is a mechanism which produces good government, and trying to disprove it. Imagine if we applied the same algorithm to God.
"The conventional proposition" is one he constructed:
Now he attacks this framing as if it's what democracy advocates believe. This is strawman argumentation.
Actual democratic theory:
The comparison to God fails because:
Political scientists don't "start with the conventional proposition" and then look for confirming evidence. They:
The evidence genuinely favors democracy over alternatives— not because of confirmation bias, but because outcomes are measurable.
Instead, let's start with what we actually do know and try to work forward.
In [28], he declared that thinking empirically is "pseudoscientific" and that historical evidence produces "artificial stupidity."
Now: "let's start with what we actually do know."
If we can't learn from empirical observation, what do we "actually know"? He's claiming epistemic authority he just spent sections denying to others.
We know that personal influence over the actions of a government, or power, is greatly sought after by members of our species. We know that in a democracy, power is shared equally among the democracy's citizens, each of whom has one vote. Therefore, since each citizen will favor a government that serves his or her interests, no one has more power than anyone else, and the government they all elect will serve, on average, the interests of all.
"Power is shared equally... each of whom has one vote."
One vote ≠ equal power. Voting is one mechanism of influence among many:
Democratic theorists and political scientists acknowledge this. He's constructing a naive version of democratic theory to attack.
His syllogism:
Problems beyond the false premise:
He's describing a theory no serious person holds.
This is certainly one theory of democracy. Call it Theory A.
He's creating "Theory A" to knock down. But this oversimplified version—equal votes mean equal power, self-interest produces optimal outcomes—is not what democratic theorists argue.
Actual democratic theory acknowledges:
By labeling this simplistic version "Theory A," he signals he'll present alternatives. Watch for whether his alternatives address actual democratic theory or just this strawman.
Let me share another, theory B:
Who wrote this? Yarvin doesn't say. By presenting it without attribution, he prevents the reader from evaluating the source's credibility, context, or agenda. Watch for whether he reveals the author later—and what that revelation tells us.
In all society or government are right to be enjoyed, burdens to be borne, and trusts to be discharged.
Among the rights are the right of property; the right of locomotion; the right to appropriate and dispose of the proceeds of our own labor; the right to worship according to conscience; and the right to protection from society in the enjoyment of all these rights, and the right to have all the legal processes and remedies provided to make this protection effectual. These are called civil rights, and when we speak of civil equality we mean that these rights belong alike and equally to all citizens, to all classes, to all colors, to all sexes, to all ages, and to all grades of intellect, society, and worth. …
Among the burdens of society and governments I may mention: working the public highways; providing public buildings; paying the public taxes; defending the public safety, etc., etc. These burdens ought to be borne by all according to fitness and capacity, for these burdens constitute the consideration we pay for the protection we get. Women and children, lunatics and idiots do not work the highways or defend the society with arms, because their positions or capacity forbid; but they are all citizens—or members of the society—and pay taxes. These are called burdens because they are borne, not for ourselves only, but for others—for the public.
Lastly, in every society or government there are trusts to be discharged. Offices are to be filled; laws are to be made, executed and administered, else there could be no rules or process for protection; and agents are to be selected for all these purposes. The whole business of selecting agents to discharge duties, as well as the discharge of the duties themselves, comes under the head of trusts. They are called trusts because they are powers exercised not for one's own good but for the good of others—for the public. The authority to vote is, therefore, a trust reposed, and the exercise of the authority is the exercise of a trust—the trust of selecting agents to provide and execute the laws by which rights are to be protected. All men are born to rights—which are personal—affecting each person only; but no man is born to a trust—to a power which affects all other members of society. You had as well say a man is born to an office as to say he is born to a vote for that office. So, again, all trusts imply capacity and integrity. No man has a right to be intrusted to discharge a duty affecting others who does not understand that duty, or has not integrity to be trusted with its faithful exercise.
How can the rights of the members of society be safe if the protection for those rights is to be provided or applied by ignorant or vicious agents? And how can ignorant and vicious agents be avoided if ignorant and vicious persons are born to the right to select them?
Rights are personal—born with persons—belong to the person, and affect the person; but trusts are relative—and born with society—belong to society—and are for the good and under control of society. How is any man born with a right to take my rights, or to select another to take my rights?
Suffrage, then, is not a right—it is not a privilege—it is a trust, and a most solemn and sacred trust. It is the trust of preserving society, of securing rights, of protecting persons.
Would you select an ignorant, or vicious, or untrustworthy man as your trustee, or the trustee for your wife or your child in the smallest concerns of life? How, then, would you make a trustee of an ignorant or vicious man to discharge these great duties, on the wise and faithful discharge of which all rights, and all protection, and all things depend?
"Women and children, lunatics and idiots" — This phrase reveals when and why this was written. The author groups women with "lunatics and idiots" as people whose "positions or capacity forbid" full participation.
This is the exact argument used against women's suffrage. The 19th Amendment wasn't ratified until 1920—because of reasoning like this.
Yarvin presents this approvingly as "Theory B."
The word "trust" is being used in two different senses:
What actually happens in democracy:
His bait-and-switch:
The false equivalence: He conflates:
These are not the same. Hiring a plumber doesn't require plumbing expertise. Voting for representatives doesn't require governing expertise. The whole point of representative democracy is that citizens select agents to act on their behalf.
The circular trap: Who grants the "trust" to vote? If existing voters decide, they exclude those whose interests conflict with theirs. This is how property owners excluded the poor, whites excluded Blacks, and men excluded women—each time using "capacity" arguments.
"Ignorant and vicious" — Who decides who is "ignorant" or "vicious"?
Historically, this language was applied to:
The argument assumes its conclusion: we must restrict voting to avoid "ignorant" voters, but those making the restriction define "ignorance" to exclude groups they don't want voting.
"Suffrage is not a right" contradicts the foundational premise of democratic legitimacy: government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
If voting is a "trust" granted by existing power holders, then:
This is the argument against democracy, stated plainly. Yarvin is showing us what he actually believes.
The "trustee for your wife or child" analogy fails:
The analogy treats citizens as dependents (like children) whose affairs should be managed by betters. It assumes some class of "wise" trustees should govern on behalf of the "ignorant."
The question he avoids: Who selects the selectors? If the answer is "existing elites," you have hereditary aristocracy. If "the people," you have democracy. There's no escape from this choice.
Obviously, this wasn't written yesterday. But don't you find it compelling?
"Don't you find it compelling?"
This is social pressure to agree before revealing the source. He wants you to commit to finding the argument "compelling" before you know who wrote it or why.
What he's not telling you yet:
The manipulation: Once you've agreed it's "compelling," you're psychologically invested. When he reveals the source, you're more likely to rationalize than reconsider.
We showed in [31] that the argument commits the equivocation fallacy. It is not compelling—it's a rhetorical trick dressed in formal language.
There are two possibilities. Either we can define good government, or we cannot.
His two options:
The excluded middle: We can define good government reasonably well by multiple comparative measures, though not perfectly or absolutely.
This false choice sets up his conclusion: if we can define it perfectly, we should engineer government "scientifically" (his preference). If we can't define it at all, democracy has no basis. Either way, he wins.
If we cannot define good government, how exactly we can agree that democracy promotes good government is entirely beyond me. In practice, what theory A tells us is that good government constitutes whatever democracy produces. Everyone's interest is weighed, and if its weight does not prevail it's just too bad. You have brown hair, so the blondes have decided that you will be ground up and put on the rosebushes.
He set up the false dichotomy in [33] (either we can define good government perfectly, or we cannot define it at all). Now he attacks one horn of his own construction.
Democrats don't claim we "cannot define good government." We claim we can define it reasonably well—well enough to compare systems and measure outcomes.
"Good government is whatever democracy produces"—no serious democratic theorist believes this.
That's precisely why constitutional democracies have:
These exist because democrats recognize majorities can be wrong. He's attacking a position nobody holds.
The "blondes grinding up brunettes" scenario is designed to make democracy sound absurd. But this is exactly what constitutional rights prevent.
In a constitutional democracy, "the blondes" cannot vote to grind up brunettes because:
He's describing unlimited majoritarianism—his strawman "Theory A"—not actual democratic governance.
We have returned to the theory of democracy as end. And this end is definitely a dead one.
He declares the argument won. But what has he actually shown?
He hasn't engaged with actual democratic theory—which holds that democracy has both intrinsic value (dignity, equality, consent) and instrumental value (better outcomes than alternatives).
"Definitely a dead one" is assertion, not conclusion.
Theory B is much more interesting. It asserts that we actually can agree on what good government is. Good government is government that protects its citizens' civil rights, minimizes the burdens it imposes on them, and faithfully executes its trusts. Any system for constituting a government that achieves this goal is a good one. Any system that does not is not. As Deng Xiaoping put it, "if the cat catches mice, who cares if it's black or white?"
Deng Xiaoping—whose government killed hundreds or thousands of pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
The quote itself is pure consequentialism: results justify any means. This logic has been used to defend every authoritarian regime in history. "The trains run on time" doesn't justify fascism.
Well, I'm afraid that's just the problem. The author of the above text was Sen. Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia, in his Notes on the Situation. Senator Hill was many things, but one of them was a Redeemer. And the point of the above passage, which I have carefully elided, was that Negroes shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Senator Benjamin H. Hill: A Confederate who served in the Confederate Senate during the Civil War, then became a "Redeemer"—the movement that ended Reconstruction and established Jim Crow.
"Which I have carefully elided": He admits to selectively editing. He removed the explicitly racist parts while preserving the "logical" framework—then asked if you found it "compelling" ([32]).
What this reveals: "Theory B"—the argument that suffrage is a "trust" requiring "capacity"—was designed from its inception to justify racial disenfranchisement. The logic was created to serve the conclusion.
This is not an accident or unfortunate association. This is the argument's purpose.
So we have a slight problem. If we follow Hill's argument that suffrage is a trust, we are pointed in a distinctly undemocratic direction. And we can follow that direction farther than Hill himself would be willing to go. Why should all white men be allowed to vote? Surely a pair of testicles and a pallid skin is hardly proof positive that the bearer of this anatomy is a responsible trustee, not "ignorant and vicious"? Surely we can devise a more effective test?
"A slight problem"—his entire "Theory B" was an argument for white supremacy. That's not "slight."
He's not rejecting Hill's argument—he's extending it. His critique isn't that Hill was wrong to argue against Black suffrage. It's that Hill didn't go far enough.
"Why should all white men be allowed to vote?"
He's arguing for restricting suffrage beyond even Jim Crow levels. This is the logical endpoint of "Theory B": oligarchy or autocracy, where only the "capable" (defined by those already in power) participate in governance.
And, if our goal is really just the faithful execution of a trust, why assume that electoral suffrage of any sort is the most effective way to constitute it? Surely the shareholders of Google have entrusted its management with a tremendous trust—$170 billion worth, last time I checked. Surely this is worth as much as Georgia, or at least Georgia in the 1870s. How does Google just skate along without any suffrage at all, whereas Georgia needs elections? And which trust would you guess is more effectively exercised?
This comparison fails on multiple levels:
What he's advocating: Government structured like a corporation—with a CEO, not elections. This is the neoreactionary vision: the "CEO state" or "corporate sovereign."
He's moved from "democracy has flaws" to "let's run government like a tech company." The mask is fully off.
On the other hand, if we recoil in horror from Senator Hill and his sheet-wearing buddies, we are left with his arguments.
He presents two options:
The excluded option: Reject both Hill and his arguments—because the arguments are fallacious.
We showed in [31] that Hill's argument commits the equivocation fallacy. The "trust" framework is logically flawed independent of who made it. We don't have to accept broken logic just because it's dressed in formal language.
"Sheet-wearing buddies": He acknowledges the KKK connection while trying to separate the "logic" from its creators. But the logic was designed to reach racist conclusions. You can't sanitize the framework by removing the explicit racism—the framework itself is the problem.
If we can define good government, we can take an engineering approach to designing a system that ensures it. Moreover, we can evaluate the expected results of this system by criteria that are, if not quantitative, at least factual and absolute, rather than ethical and subjective.
Government is not an engineering problem. The analogy fails because:
The "engineering" framing smuggles in the assumption that there's a correct design knowable by experts—eliminating democratic input by definition.
He opposes "factual and absolute" to "ethical and subjective"—implying:
The logical problems:
He's not eliminating ethics—he's hiding his ethical assumptions behind the word "factual."
Our goal is an animal that catches mice. We can add other requirements as well. Our mouse-catcher must be able to use a catbox. It should be able to purr and sit on a lap. It must not eat the baby. And so on. If what you want is good government, design for good government. If what you want is something else, why?
The cat analogy trivializes the problem:
"Design for good government" begs the question:
Democracy's answer: the people affected participate in defining "good." His answer: experts decide, everyone else complies.
Perhaps you're part of the problem—there is, after all, a problem, and somebody's got to be part of it.
Three fallacies in one sentence:
This is not argument—it's a rhetorical move to delegitimize dissent.
And is there any reason to think that democracy—Hill's kind, or our kind, or Odinga's kind, or anyone else's kind—is the output of this sort of engineering process? If not, what possible reason can we have for believing that it is the most effective mechanism for this purpose? Surely the existence of other mechanisms which are less effective is irrelevant. (Also, it is really asking too much to inflict long S's on people, but I can't resist a link to Dean Tucker.)
This question assumes his "engineering" framing is valid—but we showed in [38] that government is not an engineering problem.
The question presupposes that legitimate government should be "the output of an engineering process." Democracy's defenders reject this premise: government derives legitimacy from consent, not from design optimization.
"The most effective mechanism" sets an impossible standard:
"Less effective is irrelevant" inverts the actual question. The relevant comparison is: democracy vs. realistic alternatives (autocracy, oligarchy, theocracy). By that measure, democracy performs well.
He's also ignoring that "effectiveness" isn't the only criterion. Legitimacy, consent, dignity, and rights matter independently of efficiency.
All this is interesting. But does it really get us all the way toward not believing in democracy? I don't think so.
He admits his own argument is insufficient: "does it really get us all the way...? I don't think so."
This is an honest moment—but it raises a question: if this essay is titled "Why I Don't Believe in Democracy," why present arguments that don't "get us all the way"?
The answer: the essay's purpose isn't to prove democracy is wrong. It's to create doubt, normalize anti-democratic thinking, and make readers comfortable entertaining ideas they'd otherwise reject. The destination matters less than getting you on the path.
Daniel Dennett's new neo-atheist book is called Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Obviously as an atheist myself I find this kind of material too boring for words, and in fact I bogged down pretty hard in Dennett. But I do like the title, and I think the analogy remains useful.
What he's setting up: "Democracy as a Natural Phenomenon"—treating democracy as a human social construct (like religion) that we can reject once we see through it.
Why the analogy fails:
The rhetorical move: Borrow Dennett's intellectual credibility while admitting he didn't finish the book ("bogged down"). He wants the prestige of the reference without doing the work.
"As an atheist myself": More credential signaling—"I'm a rational freethinker who sees through comfortable illusions." This primes readers to see democracy-skepticism as similarly enlightened.
It expresses an interesting way of persuading people to become atheists. Most people are theists not because they were "reasoned into" believing in God, but because they applied Occam's razor at too early an age. Their simplest explanation for the reason that their parents, not to mention everyone else in the world, believed in God, was that God actually existed. The same could be said for, say, Australia.
Australia does exist. And we correctly believe it exists because:
This undermines his point. Social consensus + Occam's razor can lead to true beliefs—like Australia's existence, or democracy's benefits. The fact that we learned something socially doesn't make it false.
His argument proves too much: by this logic, we should doubt everything we learned from others. But that's not skepticism—it's solipsism.
Dennett's approach, which of course is probably ineffective in almost all cases, is to explain why, if God doesn't exist, everyone knows who He is. How did this whole God thing happen? Why is it not weird that people believed in Him for 2000 years, but actually they were wrong?
He's setting up the parallel: "Why is it not weird that people believed in [democracy] for [200] years, but actually they were wrong?"
The logical problem: This assumes what he needs to prove. He hasn't shown democracy is wrong—he's just assuming it so he can ask "why did people believe it?"
The disanalogy:
He's not explaining why democracy is wrong; he's explaining why people might believe something wrong, then implying democracy fits the pattern—without proving it does.
Perhaps the same approach will work in spreading this edgier mental virus⌃H⌃H⌃H⌃H⌃H vaccine of ademotism. If democracy isn't tha shizzle, why does everyone believe in it? How did it get to be so big? Because we have to admit that one very, very simple explanation of how it got to be so big is that it is, indeed, tha shizzle.
The "⌃H" characters are terminal backspaces—he's theatrically "crossing out" the word virus and replacing it with vaccine.
The first instinct was accurate: he's describing his ideology as something to spread and infect minds with. The "correction" to "vaccine" is spin—framing infection as cure.
"Ademotism": His neologism for anti-democracy. More jargon to make readers feel like insiders learning a secret vocabulary.
"If democracy isn't tha shizzle"—still assuming what he hasn't proven.
But then he admits: "one very, very simple explanation of how it got to be so big is that it is, indeed, tha shizzle."
This is significant. He acknowledges that the simplest explanation—democracy spread because it works—is available. His project requires rejecting the simple explanation in favor of a more complex one (historical accident, conspiracy, mass delusion).
Occam's razor favors the simple explanation. He's committed to the complex one without justification.
Ergo, our goal is to understand democracy as a historical phenomenon. This is getting long, so perhaps we'll take a good whack at it next week.
After 42 sections titled "Why I Don't Believe in Democracy," he concludes by saying he'll explain his actual argument... next week.
What this essay actually contained:
What it did not contain: An argument for why democracy doesn't work, what would replace it, or evidence that alternatives produce better outcomes.
The essay's purpose was never to prove a thesis. It was to normalize anti-democratic thinking—to get readers comfortable on the path, even if the destination is never reached.
In case you wonder why you should care, however, let me drop in the punch line.
"In case you wonder why you should care"—he's positioning himself as the authority who tells you what to think, rather than letting the argument speak for itself.
If the argument were compelling, readers would already care. The fact that he needs to instruct readers on why they should care reveals that the preceding 42 sections haven't made the case.
This is telling, not showing. A strong argument demonstrates its importance; it doesn't announce it.
There's something else about not believing in God in 1758. Which is that pretty much the only 18th-century writers that anyone cares to read in 2008 were, if not downright atheists, at least freethinkers of some variety.
Freethinker (noun): A person who forms opinions on the basis of reason independently of authority. Freethinkers emphasize critical thinking, skepticism, and intellectual independence—rejecting conformity and bias in forming beliefs.
Is Yarvin a freethinker? He does nothing to promote critical thinking or intellectual independence. He asks readers to "drink beer" and let him tell them "why they should care." A freethinker is defined by their process, not their conclusions.
Factually false: 18th-century writers still widely read who were NOT atheists:
The analogy fails:
Survivorship bias: We remember Galileo (contrarian, right) and forget phrenologists (contrarian, wrong). The pattern isn't "contrarian views are vindicated"—it's "correct views eventually accepted, whether contrarian or mainstream."
What he's really saying: "I'm like the 18th-century atheists—ahead of my time, swimming against ignorant conventional wisdom." But atheists had evidence and falsifiable predictions. Yarvin has no evidence autocracy works better and no successful examples. The analogy fails—being contrarian does not make one correct.
An enormous volume of writing was published during that century, and almost all of it was devotional or otherwise conventional nonsense. Only specialists read it. Perhaps this is unfortunate, but it's how it is.
"Devotional... nonsense"—dismissing religious writing without argument. We showed in [44] that religious writers from that era (Johnson, Burke, Smith, Austen) are still widely read.
This is just assertion dressed as observation.
What would you get if you tried to compose a canon of 20th-century writers, whose only criterion for inclusion would be that its members had to express or demonstrate some kind of doubt or skepticism on the value of democracy? Your writers—of fiction, poetry, essays, journalism, whatever—would certainly be in a decided minority. On the other hand, the same could be said for the 18th-century atheists. And if you compared this canon to the stuff that they make freshmen at Stanford read these days, would it be more readable, or less?
Who would be in this "anti-democracy canon"?
This is the intellectual tradition he's positioning himself within. The 20th century's anti-democratic writers were, overwhelmingly, fascists. Their ideas were tested—and produced the Holocaust, World War II, and tens of millions of deaths.
The reason anti-democratic writers are a "decided minority" isn't because they're suppressed visionaries. It's because their ideas were catastrophically wrong.
"More readable, or less?"—implies that literary quality validates ideas. But:
The Stanford dig: He dismisses academia while appealing to academic prestige. This is the same double game throughout—claiming outsider status while demanding insider respect.
And so the essay ends. No conclusion, no summary, no call to action. After 45 sections titled "Why I Don't Believe in Democracy," there is no argument—only insinuation, false analogies, a Confederate senator's disenfranchisement rhetoric, and an invitation to see yourself as a sophisticated contrarian.
The essay's purpose was never to prove democracy wrong. It was to make anti-democratic thinking feel edgy, intellectual, and safe to explore. That's the real danger—not the arguments (which fail), but the normalization.
The essay "Why I Don't Believe in Democracy" employs the following rhetorical techniques and logical fallacies:
After 45 sections titled "Why I Don't Believe in Democracy," the essay contains no argument that democracy produces worse outcomes than alternatives. It presents:
The essay's purpose is not to prove democracy wrong—it's to normalize anti-democratic thinking and make readers comfortable exploring ideas they'd otherwise reject. The danger isn't the arguments (which fail logically); it's the normalization.