The Flatterer in Chief: Lesson in Athenian Democracy

Day 3,219, 15:09 Published in Belgium Belgium by Konrad Neumann


I do find it extremely funny and ironic for a person who criticized the forum as metagaming is proposing a non-ingame “Citizen’s National Assembly” metagame. First of all, what he proposed is more or less the same system we had in the forum. All people can view and say their mind in the discussion stage. The forum congress is transparent and it offers the most secure and stable means of communication and archiving needs. There are no difference between the “Citizen’s National Assembly” and that of the forum congress other than the platform where the ingame version is less powerful and secure. Second, our “president” likes to evoke the image of Athenian Democracy without any real study and understanding of politics and civics of the Athenian system.

While Athens can be considered the birthplace of democracy, it is far from the egalitarian direct democracy as our “president” claimed. While Athens was a direct democracy for the eligible voters, there are a lot of restrictions that prevented MOST of the Athenians the right to vote. To start, only males can vote. All women were disqualified from voting which alienate and disenfranchised a huge section of the population. Only land owners can vote which also reduced a huge size of the population from voting as well. Only males who are of age 20 or above who finished their military training was granted the right to vote. Therefore, the only people who can vote in Athens were males who owns land, above the age of 20 who finished his military training can vote. Of the total population of Athens which is about 250,000-300,000 people, only 30,000 to 50,000 can vote. That means only about 12-16 percent of the total population can have a vote in politics. So much for the liberation of the masses as the Athenian direct democracy disenfranchised most of its citizenry.

In an ironic twist, Plato himself was against Athenian democracy. Democracy especially in the Athenian model is nothing more than tyranny of the majority. It was the “Citizen’s National Assembly” that voted for the execution of Socrates for asking too many questions. In addition, I see direct democracy is a huge threat as it would likely be more oppressive than before. Elder statesmen are well informed citizens with knowledge of both experience, contacts, and the mechanics of the issues and environment. Most people are not educated in the affairs of the state. In such a system promoted by the “president” experienced statesmen need not to educate the masses of the issues, all they need to do is to flatter the commoners with rhetoric and propaganda. We already see this with the actions and rhetoric of the opposition. Therefore, the rulers must flatter, rather than educate, the citizens. A demagogue, the supreme flatterer, emerges and he/she will eventually gets control of the whole nation state.

The “Citizen’s National Assembly” will not work. It makes no sense from a practical perspective nor the theoretical. As McKitkat puts it:

“This National Assembly requires an active community of dozens of people who participate in these discussion with arguments instead of just yes and nos. And looking at the current Congress PM, we don't have that. We only have very few people that care about in-game politics and they probably prefer not having anything to do with it.

The next issue is your claim that "make our mutual life much easier" which is absolutely wrong in this case. This National Assembly will make things much harder since the person responsible for overseeing this would have to control so many things, from the people voting to the discussions being held, it is a lot more complicated that just a simple Congress PM.

You consider a Congress Pm chaotic but this National Assembly would be even more chaotic than the PM. I don't see this happening at all and as Fhaemita already stated, this would require Congress to vote a new Constitution since the government can't do it.”


The assembly goes against their anti-metagaming rhetoric. In the end, it makes no sense. This is nothing more than another attempt to destroy the existing traditions and norms and replace it with one where it suits their views and political agenda. They can neuter the power and legitimacy of the forum and wipe away all of the archive and history recorded in the forum to start anew: a system where they are the establishment with hegemonic power as the flatterer in chief.