How democracy in royalty is enchanting, when representative democracy is about celebrities

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to Tanya Gold, “Meghan Markle is the Duchess the Royal Family Needs,” May 6 2019:

The real question for Americans is not what qualities make royals and those like them most worthy of identificatory admiration. The real question is why we try to solve our social and political problems by proxy through finding celebrities to serve as politicians or simply have authorized opinions as well as authorized personalities. We make ideas and artworks guilty of the sins of their authors. We pretend that our politicians can make us freer or solve our problems by representing us not in how they think but in who they are. If we are a minority or traditionally marginalized demographical group, we will get justice for ourselves as a group by electing or seeing appointed one of us. No matter how they think; does it matter how anyone does, or whether they do? These are all features of that kind of representative democracy which is a representative monarchical, or oligarchical, democracy. And that is a problem. It is perhaps the biggest political problem with America, one that the dominance of money and interest groups in politics reflects and sustains. That we care about who represents us and want them to be the best persons goes without saying. But do we want to rule ourselves, or only have the best people rule us? This is the question that societies like ours which would be democratic need to answer and, perhaps, cannot.