In other words, the category of politics we live with may depend more on power relationships and the demeanor of our society than on whether we continue to hold elections. Just as Cambodia was never really democratic, despite what the State Department and the UN told us, in the future we may not be democratic, despite what the government and media increasingly dominated by corporations tell us.
Indeed, the differences between oligarchy and democracy and between ancient democracy and our own could be far subtler than we think. Modern democracy exists within a thin band of social and economic conditions, which include flexible hierarchies that allow people to move up and down the ladder. Instead of clear-cut separations between classes there are many gray shades, with most people bunched in the middle. Democracy is a fraud in many poor countries outside this narrow band: Africans want a better life and instead have been given the right to vote...
Robert B. Kaplan Atlantic Monthly 12.97{also Robert B. Kaplan published a book called 'Balkan Ghosts' in 1994.
in 2002 he published 'Eastward To Tartary' which I read that year and from a link there, moved on to Thomas Goltz's 'Azerbaijan Diary'.
both eminently readable, comfortingly rational, and moral in a profoundly human sense. Kaplan is someone whose journalism I trust implicitly. Thomas Goltz is inherently lovable and his affection for Azerbaijan is so contagious I have it still, a year later, as though it were my own.}
a lengthy profile of Kaplan in Salon.
here's Rick McGinnis, the photographer, on Kaplan's 'Balkan Ghosts'
