The democratic myth is: “I’m not afraid of you. I defy you. I have a vote”. The reality of democracy is the “sight of something” castrating the voter. A monstrous void reminiscent of Medusa’s famously terrifying gaze to neutralise her rivals. This democratic myth is in a crisis of legitimisation as there is a steady rise of a “democratic deficit” world-wide. A commonly noted tendency of “castration” even amongst self-described democratic States and their own discourse. Subsequently, democracy is becoming more and more a monstrous and inhuman gaze to petrify any spectator into stone, a gaze like that of Medusa with her snake-like hair.
The monstrous democracy reality can only be beheaded and defeated in a democratic subject to slay the terror and regain their phallus in a demos recognition. In fact, one should follow the hero of the myth Perseus as he reduces the monstrous void of terror to the symbolic (like democracy) by viewing it through the mirror. Just like the democratic voter of symbolic castration who is forever stuck at the level of representation, a subject is stuck at a distance from the power.
The democratic myth follows Sigmund Freud’s work on the “threat” of Medusa’s hair, as this “myth” parallels an effect of the little boy who firstly sees his mother’s pubic hair as a visual negation of his own penis, a realising his “phallus” can be negated by its exception. As for Freud, all young males believe their mother was also born with a penis and in finding out this is not true is a fact of castration. This leads to a fixation on the ghastly sight where the pubic hair frames the “lack” between the mother’s legs from below, a female pubic hair region substantialising fear.
The stuck democratic subject is forever scrambling; "I was on a date with this really hot model. Well, it wasn't really a date-date. We just ate dinner and saw a movie. How did the date end? Well, the plane landed". As the truth of every democratic system is present in what the system says about itself not just in the “now” but over “time”. And this paradox is captured precisely in Perseus’s symbolic reduction.
This symbolic alienation allows him to engage reality indirectly via the mirror. An alienated actuality enabled Perseus to “act” and defeat castration by reaching the power of the Other by heroically decapitating The monster; “I am not afraid of you. I defy you. I have a penis” (as per Freud’s Das Medusenhaupt 1922).
Of course, this is a myth just like that of “democracy” where the “phallus = vote”. It is a surplus of “hard reality”, a body without organ, a point-of-erection opposed to the equality of the void. A meek rebellion put by comedian Rodney Dangerfield in his joke: "Men who do things without being told draw the most wages". Thus, “it” emerges as a negation of negation, the voter’s stiffening reassures him of the fact of his possession of the all-important world defining X.
This is against Philosophy which has famously long pursued: what is X? While in democracy there is perversion. See the old Richard Lewis joke; "I have low self-esteem; when we were in bed together, I would fantasize that I was someone else." Like a democratic subject he must remain as elusive, and disturbing, “I have low self-esteem; and when we were in democracy together, I would fantasize that I was someone else”.
Therefore, it is famous and unsurprising how Plato, Badiou and many others have criticised the democratic “type” ever since Athenian democracy as a two-fold identity; firstly, it is an egotism of purely “pleasure seeking behaviour”, or an “elderly indifference” as rational kernel. Basically, a wild mob rule paradox, a chaos put by Ellen DeGeneres, "Accept who you are. Unless you're a serial killer”.
Subsequently, the democratic “world” is not really a world but a mirror (gadget) for inversion and obfuscation. It remains an increasingly fictitious snake-like frame of “democracy simulation” disguising the castration in service of monstrous financial technocracy over linear time. All subjects are fed to debt technics establishing things are not equal outside of democracy’s flatting equivalence. An equivalence to dizzy and distract from financial systems as debt techne, a prime tension determining society not democratic identity.
Globally the identity of democracy means imperialist wars externally for the benefit of internal hegemonic forces sustaining democracy and endless surveillance state witch-hunts waged at home against anti-democratic forces of terror. Despite the limitations and self-proclaimed “progress”, democratic bourgeois revolutions did allow a public sphere to emerge for the first time in history where ordinary citizens could participate in institutionalised political discussion and debate, organise, and struggle as a “public image” representation of themselves; a self-given struggle of “world-wide significance”. Therefore, against the best Hope even a democratic bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it.
A democratic paradox captured in liberal democrat Woody Allen’s old joke; "If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think that the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever." A paradox manifesting hhorrifically, representation of identity in modern technology challenges democratic being to display itself as “energy” or “reserve”, a being of pure resources even under democracy, a being that can only be challenged by folding democracy back upon itself.
Since, democratic tradition flows from the “symbol”; it attempts to expand upon the origin of geometry via a meta-language communication from generation to generation; a communication (articulated figures) constituent of convention communication (orthographs). Thus, “You know you must be doing something right if old people like you”. Democracy is a “techno-logical memory of communication”, a past of un-lived grounds living now in a creation of a new-past. Hence, even “democratic deficit” is not even measured in geometrical elements, be it a point or a line not really “existing” as spatial-temporal presence but only as a medusa-like virtual debt.
Therefore, democratic measurement and its space is a presupposed capacity represented by a democratic figure latent until exteriorisation as democratic memory. A memory system governed by concealed "steering imperatives" of money and power. Subsequently, what is the solution to the infinite weight of the democratic deficit? Well, it is a “free association”, a public sphere self-distance from the state as "ideal speech situation"; a solution of democratic love where the “good” is against liberal democracy. Love is not the castrated “bad” democracy, but a Last Supper vision expressed under the big Other who knows.
Consequently, the solution is a tool of the demos where the physical democratic act of vision really organises the total political-economic space by coinciding with the theological Notion of the sublime love that orders the harmony of Creation. The spectator who comprehends the spatial organisation of the “democratic apparatus”, it partakes thereby in the encounter with the big Other. Thus, a mirror stage operates where Man is elevated to the living image of the state Creator, and the “we” as demos are brought through our vision to participate in Him (capax Dei).
Or the democratic subject can simply be Hercules and obtain the lock of Medusa’s hair (which possessed her powers) from Athena and use it to protect a community against attack.