Squid Games Shows Why Democracy Is Evil

And so do Ireland, England, the United States, and democracy itself… (#ThreeThoughtThursday)

#1
Dictatorship: “You have no say.”
Democracy: “Hold my beer…”

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I have to begin with a SPOILER ALERT. I am about to reveal something that is happening in the second season of Squid Games. Though it is a major theme of this season, talking about it does not really spoil anything. It’s not like “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father” or anything of that sort. Still, some people don’t like to hear anything about a show they’re going to watch, so there’s your SPOILER ALERT.

Squid Games is, if I understand correctly, one of the most watched television series of all time, so there is a decent chance you saw season one. If you haven’t, you won’t get the emotional vibe underlying this, but it will still make intellectual sense.

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In season 2, they have added a new wrinkle: all the players vote after each game to decide whether they want to move on to the next game or divide up the current amount of prize money and leave. As you might imagine, the vote creates a dichotomy.

YES voters

Those who are more greedy or desperate vote to continue. They would rather take their chances on dying—hoping that others will die instead of them—in order to increase their share of the prize money. It does not matter to them that each game has eliminated nearly 100 people—shot with machine guns right before their eyes. They want the money.

NO voters

Those who value their own lives more than money vote to end the games and get the heck out of this psychotic abattoir.

Obviously Squid Games is a morality play of sorts. The game masters, and their enforcers, are obviously psychotic, but the real targets of the writers’ ire are the contestants themselves: how quickly their greed and desperation lead to a cheapening of human life.

As you might imagine, as part of the drama of the show, the YES voters win the first few votes. The result: everyone, including the NO voters, must continue playing.

Most people living today in the so-called ‘developed’ world are possessed by the democracy delusion. (And yes, this includes all forms of indirect democracy, including constitutional republics.)

Reinforced by the entire social apparatus around them, this delusion constantly whispers in their ear…

Democracy is the ultimate evolution in human governance…
There is no better way to do things…
Voting is consent…

And other evil lies. It’s an affliction that has plagued minds for the whole of the modern era. Questioning democracy is just about as socially unacceptable now as questioning the existence of God would have been in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s.

Longtime readers will know that I have handled this topic, and objections thereto, rather thoroughly over the last year or so, including here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and elsewhere. (So please feel free to engage with those before trying to burn me as a witch.¹ )

Squid Games puts the problem in stark relief:

The YES voters have won. The NO side lost. All of you NO voters must continue to risk a brutal death, even though you have clearly withdrawn your consent.

You DO see the problem here. Right?

It does not matter that losing a vote in the typical democracy or republic does not result in you being forced to continue a blood game. That’s not the point. The point is the consent.

You’re not allowed to have sex with people without their consent. You’re not allowed to take stuff out of their garage or stay in their spare room or do anything else without their consent. Everyone knows this. Consent obviously matters to human beings.

But then when you put everyone into a pile and make them all vote for something, suddenly, this basic, obvious moral knowledge goes out the window. Suddenly consent ceases to matter for some reason.

Sorry, all of you who lost the vote and do not consent to [whatever we just voted on]. The majority has spoken. Sucks to be you.

Even if you do not yet know of, or understand, what a better alternative might be, you still see the problem. Right? RIGHT?

#2
It’s not just about consent

Democracies and republics empower legislatures. Legislatures are run by legislators. Legislators make up laws. Emphasis on make up. They invent rules out of whole cloth.

If the country in question has a constitution, and if the constitution is strongly worded enough, then some things are off limits to legislators. But constitutions can never be worded strongly enough to overcome those determined to do end-runs around them. (And the sort of people who want to do end-runs around constitutions are always there, and always will be.)

Legislators are not bound by the only legitimate source of law: natural law. Common-law courts are, to a degree, but not legislators. Legislators can do what they want. At very least, they can always throw some spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

The state of New York, for example, does that all the time. Their full-time legislature is pumping out legislation constantly, including bills that would make a Nazi blush. They know that most of it won’t pass, but they do it anyway.

Now ask yourself…

How is okay to have a system that puts your most basic rights up for a vote in the first place?

It isn’t.

Over the last few years, Ireland has been working on legislation that, among other things, would effectively criminalize reading non-mainstream sources of news. Seriously, it would.

Some will point to the fact that a few of the more odious provisions were eventually removed before the law went into effect and say, “Look, the system worked the way it is supposed to.”

If this is you, then you are entirely missing the point:

The problem is not that people misused a good system to put a bad thing up for a vote.
The problem is that the system allows bad things to be up for a vote in the first place.

Any system that puts your natural rights on the chopping block is an evil system. Do you see the difference?

You could also look to the UK, where they have not only criminalized speech, but they have also essentially legalized rape. Not officially, but de facto…

We are going to import thousands of rapists.

Police are going to do virtually nothing about it.

The police will, however, arrest people for speaking out about the situation—including arresting women who have themselves been raped, on the charge of “prostitution.”

Most people who hear this think,

Oh how terrible that such bad people have taken over the system and are doing such bad things. Shame on the police. Shame on Kier Starmer. Shame on the politicians.

And sure, shame on them. But if that is where you stop, you are missing the point. The system allows them to do this. The system allows them to put your rights on the chopping block. This means that, just like the contestants in Squid Game, your rights and consent do not matter.

The system is the problem.

#3
And while we’re on the subject…

As some of you will recall, I am slowly reducing my social media footprint—getting off of most social media venues. Decompiling my Twitter and Facebook are going to take a lot more time, however, as I have been on them for years.

In the course of this decompilation process, I am finding a few things that I would like to record for posterity—moments in recent history that should not be forgotten. For example, this post I made in late 2022:

1598 athletes have suffered death by cardiac arrest since the vaccines were initiated for Covid 19 .

These are professional and amateur athletes most whom were in top physical condition at the time of their demise .

In order to compare the time period of that many athletes dying of cardiac arrest one must search over a 38 year period.

That number has obviously gone up massively since. And so, just to drive the point home again…

The wickedness to which we were subjected during the covid years was allowed by democracy. The problem was not (only) bad people misusing the system. The problem was with a system that can be misused in that way.

Are. You. Starting. To. Get. It?

(Note: this is an excerpt, and thus technically constitutes a spoiler. That said, it does not give away much more than a trailer would.)

1. Historical point of interest: no one was burned as a witch in the Colonies. They were stoned, hung, pressed, and drowned, but not burned. Actual witch-burning was a European thing.