fahrenheit451:076

Ain't democracy wonderful? Isn't mass participation by the ordinary electorate in public political discourse and a degree of activism a welcome indicator of the health of the body politic? Where are the corporate media Commentariat who are usually the first to applaud such happenings? Where for heaven's sake are those opinionaters who professionally feign to take an oppositional stance and their plethora of incisive leader articles and espousals of the immutable virtues of democracy? Well, in the case of The Republic of Turkey and its legitimate,constitutional government..all the aforementioned are precisely nowhere. Millions took part on Sunday 7 August in a Pro-democracy rally in Istanbul that repudiated the Military putsch attempt of July 15. Millions.  Mature Realpolitik discourse and polemics doesn't sit well with what passes these days for the western democratic pluralist tradition. Not that the West's authentic defenders of such traditions would  be capable any longer of discerning any lingering vestige of that which they once believed they were upholding let alone defending.  Turkey and its Political leadership has been consigned to the proverbial " doghouse ". Not that it matters too much or is of any significant concern to the Turkish state at the present moment. The truth, I would venture, is that the World is in a no more perilous or precarious an existential state than it was in the latter half of the 19th.Century. Wars, regional conflicts, trade disputes, population upheavals,diplomatic and political shennanigans and a plethora of domestic national instabilities contrived by unsympathetic outside influences and covert agendas. Plus ca change.