Well, there’s progress and there’s regression, so it’s a difficult trajectory to plot. By and large, with regard to human rights, I think there is notable progress. With regard to democracy, it’s a much more complicated story. Formal democracy is increasing. So democracy in the sense of, say, the ability to vote for people in office is increasing. On the other hand, the barriers to effective use of democratic rights are also increasing. That’s why skepticism and disillusionment with democracy are very notably increasing throughout a good part of the world, including the United States.
So, in the United States, for example, which is one of the most free and democratic societies there is, by now about three-quarters of the population regard presidential elections as basically a farce-just some game played by rich contributors and the public relations industry, which crafts candidates to say things that they don’t mean and don’t understand. And those proportions have been increasing. The same has been happening through Latin America and much in of the world. So formal democracy is definitely increasing, but with regard to substantive democracy, I don’t think one can easily draw that conclusion.
Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)
