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America Is Not A Democracy

Old Trapper said:
They either need more forums, or an expansion of existing ones so a person can actually tell where to post an article such as this for a discussion.

There are so many good points in this article that one has a hard time picking out what to use as a beginning. Thus I would have to urge everyone to read the entire article. The ideal situation would be where the words of the idealists (Government of the people, by the people, for the people) would be a reality. However, it is a fallacy. We have become a country ruled by elitist politicians who are ruled by the lobbiests, and corporate magnets, who are in turn ruled by the elitist 1%. The political influence of the people is minimal at best, and non existent at its worse:

Trump made several promises when he accepted the nomination of the RNC of which this was one: “I am your voice,” That was a lie as was his proclamation in his inaugural address: “Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america-is-not-a-democracy/550931/

"Gilens and Page tested those theories by tracking how well the preferences of various groups predicted the way that Congress and the executive branch would act on 1,779 policy issues over a span of two decades. The results were shocking. Economic elites and narrow interest groups were very influential: They succeeded in getting their favored policies adopted about half of the time, and in stopping legislation to which they were opposed nearly all of the time. Mass-based interest groups, meanwhile, had little effect on public policy. As for the views of ordinary citizens, they had virtually no independent effect at all. “When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” Gilens and Page wrote.

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"The work of K Street lobbyists, and the violation of our government by big money, has fundamentally transformed the work—and the lives—of the people’s supposed representatives. Steve Israel, a Democratic congressman from Long Island, was a consummate moneyman. Over the course of his 16 years on Capitol Hill, he arranged 1,600 fund-raisers for himself, averaging one every four days. Israel cited fund-raising as one of the main reasons he decided to retire from Congress, in 2016: “I don’t think I can spend another day in another call room making another call begging for money,” he told The New York Times. “I always knew the system was dysfunctional. Now it is beyond broken.”
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Indeed, America is very much a plutocracy, an oligarchic college of corporations and the ultra wealthy, and it has been veering in that direction since 1976 per Buckley v Valeo when the SCOTUS idiotically deemed money/political spending to be speech and thus unlimited political spending protected are enshrined by the 1st amendment, thus allowing the wealthy unprecedented influence and power over our politicians. For all the talk about Citizens United, the true root of the problem, Buckley v Valeo, and the constitutional amendment needed to address it, largely and unfortunately manages to escape attention.

Here's the original 2014 study authored by Gilens and Page by the way: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites...testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

To be clear, the controlling establishment for both parties are bought and paid for; there is no shelter from the storm. Democrats may often act as the good cop to the Republican bad, but they're both ultimately legislative minions acting at the behest of their sponsors. It's why Republicans act to secure deficit exploding tax increases and clamour for wasteful wars costing in the trillions despite claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility; why the establishment Democrats (and their media affiliates) hedge out Bernie's people and talk incessantly about gun control and identity politics over substantive policies to help the poor and middle class and pay for those programs despite such lying at their ostensible core: because the donors, and their adjacent interests have decreed that it be so.
 
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Terryj said:
Democracy does make a totally fair society, as long as your in the Majority because the Minority doesn't count.
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Majorities shift. The majority that wants to raid the treasury at the ballot box could be different than a majority that wants to punish dissent.
 
Exactly, Terry. It's the rule of the 50%+1 (or greater) imposed on the 50%-1 (or less). That is why there need to be anti-democratic features in a democracy. Otherwise, majority rule would degenerate into an elected dictatorship.

SDET: the people who want to raid the treasury are typically the ones who will punish dissent in order to get their way.
 
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America is the greatest Democracy of History. Other great Democracies have caught up, but chronologically the USA IS FIRST.

Anyone who does not realize this historical fact is an intellectual corpse, an intellectual dead body.
 
USViking said:
America is the greatest Democracy of History. Other great Democracies have caught up, but chronologically the USA IS FIRST.

Anyone who does not realize this historical fact is an intellectual corpse, an intellectual dead body.
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Hang on a second, it depends on how you define "democracy". We were not a "democracy" by today's standards in 1789 (when the present constitution became effective).
 
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