After the Sept. 11, 2021 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, “The Bush administration claimed that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraqi people were eager to establish an American-style democracy and would welcome the Americans as liberators. These arguments carried the day.” By October of that year 69% of the House and 77% of the Senate voted to invade Iraq. 72% of Americans were in favor of the invasion.

“But the truth turned out to be different from what the government said and what the majority believed…. As the war progressed, it became evident that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that many Iraqis had no wish to be ‘liberated’ by Americans or to establish a democracy. By August 2004 another poll found that 67 percent of Americans believed that the invasion was based on incorrect assumptions. As the years went by, most Americans acknowledged that the decision to invade was a catastrophic mistake” (Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus).

Democracy assumes humans are fallible and prone to error. That’s why real democracies have an independent media, academic freedom, the justice system, separation of powers, and checks and balances. These institutions provide self-correcting mechanisms to government fallacies and outright lies.

Populist leaders who gain power in a democracy proclaim that only they have the solutions. They claim infallibility and never admit error. The leader strongly asserts he is following the will of the people, even while he finds ways to silence the media, co-op universities, and place judges and justices who favor the populist leader in positions of power. This can be done through threats and intimidation, or by arresting and prosecuting his opposition. “Democracies die not only when people are not free to talk but also when people are not willing or able to listen.”

There is a difference between information and truth, according to Harari:

“It is particularly crucial to remember that elections are not a method for discovering truth. Elections establish what the majority of people desire. Rather, they are a method for maintaining order by adjudicating between people’s conflicting desires. Elections establish what the majority of people desire, rather than what the truth is.”

Understanding what truth is versus information requires discernment. Living in a democracy is not simple; it’s complicated and complex.

“Simplicity is a characteristic of dictatorial information networks in which the center dictates everything and everybody silently obeys. It’s easy to follow this dictatorial monologue. In contrast, democracy is a conversation with numerous participants, many of them talking at the same time.”

“Moreover, the most important democratic institutions tend to be bureaucratic behemoths. Whereas citizens avidly follow the biographical dramas of the princely court and the presidential palace, they often find it difficult to understand how parliaments, courts, newspapers, and universities function This is what helps strongmen mount populist attacks on institutions, dismantle all self-correcting mechanisms, and concentrate power in their own hands.”.

“What turns someone into a populist is claiming that they alone represent the people and that anyone who disagrees with them—whether state bureaucrats, minority groups, or even the majority of the voters—either suffers from false consciousness or isn’t really part of the people.”

Opponents are turned into lesser creatures: rats, vermin, rapists and terrorists, and therefore they do not really represent “the people”. Opponents are “othered” and diminished in the process. The opposition ceases to be human.

Democracy is a conversation where there are several legitimate voices. The populist leader claims to represent the people but controls judges, journalists, and university professors and in the process muzzles and silences dissenting voices.

America was founded by a people who rebelled against leaders who claimed to be infallible, who failed to admit mistakes, and who refused to listen and who tried to control and stifle self-correcting mechanisms. Americans are, by nature and culture, rebels who don’t like to be told what to do.

Eventually, as in the case of the decision to invade Iraq in 2002, the truth eventually will rise to the surface out of a confusing mass of misinformation. That change in attitude will come, but it will be messy and divisive, just as it was during the American Revolution.

Be prepared to watch this pattern repeat itself in most of our lifetimes.

Richard Elfers is a columnist, a former Enumclaw City Council member and a Green River College professor.