HOW TO TELL IF A DEMOCRACY IS DEAD OR ALIVE, 3 vital signs—a dialogue tape

HOW TO TELL IF A DEMOCRACY IS ALIVE OR DEAD:—three vital signs Following the doctor’s common analogues of heart beat, breath, and oxygen levels, I suggest: truth in function, the eagle of freedom, and the circle of dialogue. To set the tone spiritually, I begin with a simple question: What is the geometry of democracy? Is it two guns pointed at each other? Or is it a circle? At present, the overwhelmingly active formative metaphor is clearly TWO GUNS. Within the conceptual space, we are now habituated to the idea that DEMOCRACY IS A GAME, or worse, DEMOCRACY IS WAR. We therefore now also tacitly assume the logic and necessity of behavioral phrases like WINNER TAKE ALL, ATTACKS, SLASH and BURN, TAKE NO PRISIONORS, NEVER TOO FILTHY or DISGUSTING ad hominem assaults. So a central norm of civil discourse and formal debate of, on the hand, freely criticizing ideas, but, on the other, never stooping to ‘attack the man,’ has now been altogether abandoned, the Latin phrase ad hominem now sounding almost quaint or even outright elitist. IMAGE: The LARCH or TAMARACK I mention in the recording. The only conifer in the WALLOWAS that loses its needles every fall.