Newcomers start here:

To the curious passer-by: This site makes the case that the world has climbed partway up the hill we call Democracy; we're on a plateau that we mistake for a summit. Also that the next step up is simple; a twist of the mixture screw, that would mean no angry crowds in Tunis or Cairo, no looming war in Abidjan, and not even the dumbest of Brit tabloids screeching about race war in Jo'burg when Mandela dies. Plus that the 9 beggars now populating my local intersection recede to 8, then 7, then 6, and foreseeably to 0, Plus the razor-wire and electric fences that surround my life stop increasing, and quite soon start reducing.

Here below are four introductions to D2, Democracy Version Two. Personally I think that any one of them gives you the picture, but I concede this is not a majority view. Still, if you read all four and they make no sense, I'll be surprised. And then there's there's reams more picture-filling-in all over the site. Luv, Denis.

Introduction No 3, from about Oct 2010 -- I think the best-read bit of this site, though the counter seems to have taken a walk.

If you think people welcome the message that communal life can be nicer, freer, friendlier, think again. People get angry, especially in places that spend much time griping that communal life is not nice, not free, not friendly. Instant response is: “cheeky bastard; who’s he to tell me I can live life like I wish to but never have!” So people want to find holes, and that’s fair enough. I’d do the same. Who wouldn’t?

But, oh, those holes get found in unseemly haste, and presented as the most resounding put-downs.

The classic is when someone talks of Denis’s theory, and someone else says “what?” and I must start “Well, I think we’re at the baseline of a higher grade of civilisation...” and I have up to nearly a whole uninterrupted minute before the new guy says a phrase that is inscribed inside my forehead: “Let me tell you why you’re wrong”.

This is the page where I reply to academics etc on why D2 can’t work.

Not that these people are referring to D2; mostly they never heard of it. Someone else is using them as “authority” to tell me that D2 can’t work.

I believe that nearly all the time I’ll turn these alleged rebuttals of D2 into reinforcement for D2. You’ll judge, I hope, and tell me if you don’t agree

I’ve said, and will keep saying, the job of this site is to convince you that D2 is good for you. My plan is that before they put me in the wooden box I want to know that my country is en route to the benign and contented place that I myself have never lived in. That’s a big objective. It gives me licence to push D2 in any way that comes up.

So when my friend J becomes the fifth person to tell me "Fareed Zakaria says you're wrong", I go and read Fareed.

This site is 93% about saying that a better way of running countries is available and accessible, requiring only the bringing forward of democracy's next step. It's 2% job-seeking by me, Denis, and 5% bloggy stuff and light relief. The reason it exists is to bring you, too, to the belief that D2 is for real. If this theme interests you, I'll try hard to settle your doubts. If it does not interest you, you need waste no further time clogging up the site with comments like "bo-o-ring" and "who cares".

Thanks.

Nearly all my life I have hated the country I love.

The love is for our people, of whom 1 in 20 belong to my tribe, the Anglo-Saxons. Growing into ever fuller co-existence with the other 19 makes life elating.

The hate is for our politics. First, politics made us an oppressive nation, built on belittlement. In a euphoric spurt around 1994 we beat that, briefly. Then we settled into a new politics that makes us a pathetic nation, built on pretence.

Long ago it struck me that we could have the love without the hate. So could other unhappy nations, marred by rifts that were blamed on the people. The people weren't wrong; the equation was wrong. Our potential is more civilised than our politics allows our practices to be.

Looking for resolution, I queried the value of democracy. In a long view, democracy had been an advance on what went before it – oppression and bullying – but, notably in newer democracies, it had jammed as a headcount. It was supposed to mean that people ruled, but all that the people got to do was choose a clique, often by a virtual ethnic census. Opposition voters were disenfranchised in effect if not in name. Ruling party voters stoned cars to get their voices heard. There had to be better than this.