“Please Vote For Me” falls within Machiavelli’s concept of Democracy. In The Prince, Machiavelli places emphasis on the notion that politics is not about morality. He believes that the principle of virtue, and striving to implement virtue in politics is an unfeasible ideal. Mansfield’s introduction to his translation of The Prince manifests Machiavelli’s precept that: “that no moral rules exist, not made by men, which men must abide by” (Mansfield XI). Later, Machiavelli denotes that the preservation of one’s power is synonymous with the preservation of society and “whatever is necessary may be called just and reasonable” (Mansfield XI). In the school election for class monitor, Luo Lei realizes what’s necessary to attain and preserve his power. While Luo Lei’s methods for winning the election may fall out of accordance with what many of us would consider moral, Machiavelli would contend that politics has never, nor ever will be virtuous. However, the class election is nonetheless a manifestation of democracy. Modern day American politics does not stray far from this classroom’s electoral microcosm. Politics today usually connote ‘unfair play’ in the sense that politicians will flex their influence to preserve or attain power; we most notably see this with bribery, coercion and ensuring unrealistic promises to their base. And yet, this is still democracy. What this documentary truly uncovers are the faults in the democratic system about how players who intend to manipulate politics through the preceding measures can do so.

– Ella Smit

“Please vote for me” encapsulates a democratic accession to power by Luo Lei in a classroom election with some undemocratic conventions: Luo Lei buys his classmates votes with a field trip provided by his father, he also gets to run again despite the fact that he has been monitor for two years already. True this is an election where the people get to vote free of any voter fraud, but the actions leading up to the vote question the integrity of it.

A democracy is “by the people for the people”, but can the people of this third grade class really determine who is best suited to “rule” them when they’re constantly faces with bribery and propaganda (Xu Xiaofei being accused of eating too slow to further promote Cheng Cheng’s campaign).

In the end, the film has a fair vote and every classmate gets a vote, but what is this teaching them about democracy if the campaign is just an invitation to speak negatively about their classmates and allow their fathers to buy them votes?

Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk discusses a wide variety of things that pertain to the survival of democracy. One of their worries, which Tocqueville as “intermediary associations”, are the informal mechanisms that sustain a liberal democracy. These mechanisms/associations are defined as “the groups in between the government and the family that exist as arbiters and regulators of society” (Foa and Mounk 7). Foa and Mounk then identify factors that are degrading the strength of these mechanisms/associations and conclude that politicians are acting too much like businessmen and the system is too open now leading people to be able to do whatever they want. To prevent this peril from reducing the chance this democracy has for survival, there needs to be a series of balances that Foa and Mounk later introduce. The first is the balance between aristocratic and democratic ruling, the second is between popular passions and public policy, and the final is between checks and balances. All of these opposing forces need to strike a cooperative balance to prevent one party from gaining too much power and acting selfishly to reduce the justices and freedoms of its citizens.

If we fully register and engage with Tocqueville’s establishment of “intermediary associations” playing an important role in the sustainment of liberal democracies, and look at these mechanisms’ applicability in today’s epoch of democracy in America, then yes, democracy’s survival is a cause for concern. Tocqueville’s definition of informal mechanisms as entities that, “are the groups in between the government and the family that exist as arbiters and regulators of society” (Illing 7), are, in a more basic understanding, associative groups that aren’t political. By this token, Tocqueville believes that these associations carry just as much importance as other political organizations because they are a cohort of people working to mediate and flex their preferences on the government but whom are separate from the government. Zakaria and Illing, however, dually note that these intermediaries of society are dwindling in the face of American liberal democracy. Essentially, political parties have assumed greater importance over non-political associations and have become entities that operate in more selfish and monetarily focused ways— whom Zakaria refers to as ‘entrepreneurs’ in politics. Moreover, Zakaria points out that liberal democracy is sustained by these waning non-political associations, and because these associations are also the cultural basis for liberal democracy, democracy is imperiled. An interesting metaphor Zakaria uses to describe liberal democracy is its comparison to a highway exit and how it is one of many, meaning that liberal democracy, although the favored implementation of democracy, is not a likely outcome. What we have seen in the Trump era are unprecedented political tactics that appeal to raw populism. Trump’s politics create a system that takes the passions of voters and works to implement those passions, but defies democratic principles because there is no deliberation or consideration of what others want— a major peril to democracy and society as a whole. In Foa and Monk’s piece, they use empirical data to support how many Americans are dissatisfied with American liberal democracy in the presidency, Supreme Court, and Congress to be at record low levels. So low that 1 in 15 Americans likened the idea of military rule in the United States over a democracy, and has since grown to be 1 in 6. This is an alarming statistic considering that 1/6 of the American public is so dissatisfied with the best form of democracy by many accounts. My fear is that as American political institutions grow increasing polarized, as trends suggest, then the disillusionment with liberal democracy will turn into greater skepticism from the American public, therefore endangering the future of democracy as an ideology.

-Ella Smit

Throughout class discussions, we’ve addressed and discussed the question of whether political science should be considered a science or not and why. One of the biggest critiques of political science is the lack of empirical evidence to support the claims it tries to make. This flaw in research is clear in two places in David Lerners’s “The Passing of Traditional Society”. In both places, Lerner claims to have insight into the minds and hearts of the people he is interviewing. When writing about the grocer, Lerner claims that the grocer was “nervous and also proud to be interviewed although he tried to hide it” (Lerner 22). This is a bold claim with very little evidence to support it. Later when Lerner explains how the Balgati people interpret the grocer, he writes that “Some Balgati were talking loud about the Grocer to keep their own inner voices from being overheard by the Chief- or even by themselves” (Lerner 25). Again, another bold assumption with no sufficient supporting evidence. I think this problem goes beyond the ability of Lerner to produce sufficient evidence. Here, Lerner is assuming he can break into the world of the private, a world that its by definition exclusive. No one can see into the minds and hearts of other people, period. Lerner, armed with the assumption that he can, makes two different claims about the feelings of other people. It is possible that Lerner is trying to do what Scott says we must do and provide our own interpretations to what we observe, but I don’t think Lerner has enough authority or credibility to interpret the actions of these people and comment on their motives, thoughts, or feelings.

While Masha Gessen makes a well-informed attempt at diagnosing Russia’s high mortality rate, drawing from the research of Michelle Parson and Nicholas Eberstadt, the analysis and conclusion leave a lot to be desired. When summarizing Eberstadt’s data and analyzing it herself, she uses a plethora of other countries to excuse the Russian rates of the given lifestyle characteristic. Their diet is not as fatty as the Western Europeans. They don’t smoke as much as the Greeks and Spaniards. They don’t drink as much as much as the Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians. But if the Western Europeans have the fatties diet and Russians are second to that, if the Greeks and Spaniards are the heaviest smokers and Russians are right behind them, and if the Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians are the heaviest drinking followed closely behind by the Russians, the combination of diet, smoking, and drinking would be high enough to explain a higher than expected death rate. Just because Russians are not #1 at any given unhealthy activity does not mean that that specific activity has no correlation to the high death rate. The methods and analysis of this data need considerably more credibility if they aim to explain why so many Russians are dying.

In class, we have repetitively come across the idea that the state can pressure you to conform and can control your body, but the state never has access to what is in your heart and mind unless you act on those thoughts/feelings. The only way for social scientists to gain access to this internal space is through a “thick description”, and while Parson attempted that in her thorough analysis, she was analyzing the wrong group of people, the survivors that are way older than the current youth population in Russia. While Gessen acknowledges this handicap, that does little to make it more credible. Perhaps “a series of long unstructured interviews with average Muscovites”, if the right group was interviewed, would be sufficient to diagnose death by broken heart, but the empirical scientist in me begs for more concrete evidence. While Eberstadt presents this in his analysis, as I wrote earlier, simply saying the Russians don’t eat as badly as this group, don’t smoke as much as another group, and don’t drink as much as that group over there, is not sufficient to rule out those causes in death.

Finally, even if this diagnosis is rock solid, what is the best course of treatment?

Orwell in this piece presents his belief that the dominant group has less power than the subordinate, but I do not know that I completely agree. I think that the way in which one determines who has power in Orwell’s situation depends greatly upon one’s definition of power itself. Orwell sees the Burmese people’s “shared laugh,” and their ability to make him act a certain way, to “play the part,” as a sign of their power over him. While this may be so, I tend to view the “shared laugh” as something that keeps the subordinate right where they are; similar to Wedeen’s argument, the “shared laugh” of the Burmese in this case gives them the illusion of some disturbance of Orwell’s authority, but at the end of the day, Orwell still holds the gun, the British Raj remains in power, and the Burmese continue their lives. Furthermore, and perhaps more interesting, while the ability of the Burmese to make Orwell act differently than he wanted to may seem incredibly powerful, it can also be seen as perpetuating the Burmese people’s inferiority; as Demian points out, the English enforce their authority through violence and fear, but isn’t it the Burmese who force the English to act this way? In this case at least, Orwell would not have used violence had he not felt the pressure from the Burmese to do so, yet it is the use of violence that keeps him in the people’s mind as having power. In this way, the Burmese become—as Havel suggests—agents of their own subordination.

– Emily Peckham

There is an aspect of the third dimension of power, the idea that the elite have to compromise with the masses, which is evident in Orwell’s account of shooting an elephant. Orwell succumbed to the pressure of the two thousand natives and killed the elephant despite the fact that they all knew the elephant was peacefully eating and did not deserve to die. Orwell could not, just because he had the rifle, do whatever he wanted. He had to conform to the masses regardless of the fact that he was the one in the supposed position of power. This necessity is quite powerful and arguably the biggest force behind Orwell’s killing of the elephant. He ends his account insisting that he killed the elephant “to avoid looking like a fool”. Orwell didn’t want to appear foolish in front of the natives, meaning the native’s perception of Orwell was important to him and significantly influenced his actions.

I completely agree with your general argument that our public school system does not teach students how to think critically, and I particularly identify with your statement that children are “taught what, not how, to think.” Although there are of course exceptions to this generalization, students—whether they are writing an essay or solving a math problem—are often taught step-by-step methods in school, and it is not unheard of for students to lose points/credit for not following these methods to a tee. I think that this method of teaching has taken root primarily due to the pressures associated with our system of standardized testing; it’s role as a determinant of both teacher and student worth has fostered an environment in which teachers teach and students learn for the sake of achieving the highest grade, rather than for the sake of the advancement of knowledge and critical thinking skills. This style of teaching the masses is most certainly problematic, particularly when students move on to college and eventually to their professional careers where critical thinking and the formation of original thought becomes especially necessary. Not only that, but without the capacity for critical and original thinking—as you pointed out—people will be deprived of some of the most enriching aspects of the human experience.

– Emily Peckham

What else, besides the current public school system, should serve as “a determinant of position/success within the social hierarchy”?

I agree with you and Gatto, our school system is not structured in the most productive and efficient way with the best interest of its students in mind, and I’m on your side in the claim that autonomy is not the answer and that some sort system is needed because this complex society would not function if everyone was left to govern their own education entirely. I think the solution, in an extremely broad sense, is a balance between autonomy and conformity. Young children do not have the diligence and motivation to hold themselves accountable for everything they should be learning. There needs to be a routine system in place that provides the authority and guidance these young children need to stay focused. At the same time, the current system is too repetitive and boring.

If students are going to have the autonomy Gatto thinks they deserve, someone needs to inform students on the different choices they have. How will a student know (s)he wants to study neuroscience if no one ever introduces him/her to that field of study? Additionally, I believe there are some very basic skills every citizen should know to be a productive member of society, like reading, multiplication, etc. In short, let’s keep some aspects of the current system but let each individual student have more of a say in what they get to learn. I think Williams is an appropriate example of this balance. There are certain classes we have to take to graduate so we are exposed to Language/Arts, Social Studies, and Science/Math, but we get to tailor extremely personal course paths for ourselves as we pursue the courses that we want to study. When are students responsible enough to make these decisions for themselves?