A democracy, by definition, is rule by the will of the people. It specifically requires that the dominant force in the political arena is the power of an equally distributed vote. The foundation of a democracy is not the fact that people have a vote, per se, but rather it is the goal achieved by giving each person a vote: the equal contribution of each citizen to the formation of the power that governs them.
Now of course no political system is perfect. The US experiment with democracy prevented minorities and women from voting which runs counter to the pure principle, and the very fact that we use a representative democracy means our votes really only control who speaks for us: They are not an actual vote on actual policy. But neither of these deviations undermines the effort. No human enterprise is flawless and it is ridiculous to evaluate leadership or government based on the exceptions or individual failings just as it is would be to vindicate it by virtue of an individual success.
Like in all judgments, the important measure of a government's behavior is not what it say it is, or what it says it does, or even its specific successes or failures, but rather the patterns that repeat themselves as themes throughout. Once you turn to looking at the repeated behaviors that rise through the rhetoric you start to be able to really get an idea of what kind of government you have.
A Plutocracy, by definition, is rule by a wealthy or power provided by wealth. In an overt plutocracy the number of votes you get in politics is directly based on how much money you have. The old Italian merchant city-states were ruled this way such as Venice. The theory behind plutocracy is that the people who have the most wealth have the most to lose and are doing the most within the governed area, and therefore deserve a larger say in what happens.
So is the United States, are we a Democracy or a Plutocracy?
Now if we look at this from a democratic point of view, anyone can be president or run for office no matter where they come from if they win the hearts and minds of the people. Very democratic.
But In 2012, the elections across the board will likely cost over eight billion dollars with each party roughly raising a billion dollars for president alone. That would be one thousand millions. Each. And eight times that when including the house and senate races. While we love the idea of anyone becoming president, the fact is they have to be 'hired' by one of two political parties or they have to be ridiculously wealthy, themselves. This is not a job the parties sit and let filter out based on pure popularity either; They actively court, groom, and interview their candidates with vigor.
The congressional and senate races are also ridiculously expensive, regularly costing millions, and in recent years some have reached tens of millions. Now if you consider that the average household income is $50,223, it makes it pretty clear that the only people who can run for office are those either extremely wealthy themselves or endorsed by the well funded parties.
So are we democratic? Don't answer yet.
Presuming you're not independently wealthy, that means even if you do take the nomination of one of the parties that can fund you, the question arises where did they get their money? It's important because parties don't get their money for free. Sure, some of it comes from ideological alliances with voter donations in small amounts left to the absolute discretion of the party, but a lot of it comes from specific large volume donors that have expectations of their investment. After Citizen's United, the amount of these high volume conditional donors has gone through the roof just as the amount required to run has risen sharply.
So what it amounts to is that in order to be competitive in the American electoral system, you have to load yourself up with funding from interests besides your own that may or may not align with your constituents. The result of this is that your political agenda is quickly filled up with the expectations and 'costs' of receiving the money you needed to win office. This is clearly visible on both sides of the aisle as the new habit has become to stake out the issues you hold fast to in advance. What I mean is that officials who want to stand for something often have to do so right away – stake out the territory they hope to stand in before the lobbyists and donors tell them what position to hold. Doing so, of course, risks the inability to raise funds from groups who want that ground under their control which in turn may remove you from the game.
And turning down funding is US politics is unwise. 93% of all congressional elections are won by the person who spends the most, 94% of senatorial campaigns likewise go to the biggest spender. If the average Joe is living on $50,000 a year for his family and the average congressional seat costs $1,000,000 to run for that means that even if Joe has a comfortable savings account of a year's salary sitting around, he's in control of 5% of his election. 95% of his representation is owned by someone else.
Arguably we could say this is all just the mechanics of democracy in a capitalist society, but there are a few other things worth considering. The recent moves to restrict voting in the States based on no evidence of voter fraud, for example. Restricting voting away from non-moneyed people is one of the core final moves of a shift towards plutocracy. The voters being restricted are mostly students, the poor, and transients like migrant workers, or in other words, the poor. State intervention to fund and protect core business is also a final stage in plutocratic evolution, such as the wall street and even arguably the GM bailouts. In recent years, we have seen the removal of campaign finance reform and in recent months we have seen a government unable and unwilling to intervene on behalf of the suffering middle class due to pressures from powerful economic sources. Plutocracy also has wealth determining public policy, whereas democracy is the reverse with public policy determining the opportunities for wealth.
Too thready as evidence of a plutocratic shift, how about this: In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, the order of political priorities for Americans was, in order of importance: job creation (48%), Government Spending (16%), Health Care (11%), The Wars (8%), National Security (6%), Energy and Gas (4%), and Immigration (4%). As of today, 5 congressional committees are reviewing anti-abortion laws and not a single jobs plan, the president's or otherwise, on the table. This is not new. This is how Congress has been actually behaving despite what they say. For the now 11% approval rated congress it is par for the course where the people's opinion on everything from taxing the wealthiest Americans (78% approval) to closing tax loopholes (64% approval) are simply ignored. You have to have bipartisan support to reach these kinds of numbers, yet the Republicans in particular seem unfazed and continue to push for large business regulatory breaks and tax cuts.
So is the United States a plutocracy? Is that where we're going?
Clearly I'm writing this as a cautionary note. One that illustrates a slip in how our government works and the direction the country is headed in. You'll need to weigh for yourself whether you think we are still in a country that allows its citizens to govern themselves. There is reasonable evidence out there that we are not. And here's the real clincher: This is the piece that I think people should take a deep breath and read twice.
The road to plutocracy has a dangerous off-ramp. Because the nature of plutocracy is a shift of power away from the people into the hands of the wealthy either by design or just consequence of economic growth, the anger of the labor population is inevitable. If that anger at being disempowered grows too quickly and remains unaddressed, leaving patriotic Americans feeling like an elite class has corrupted and taken their government, there is a historically proven connection to another option by which the growth of that rising plutocracy can be crushed, the people restored to power, and the control of wealth in the wealth of the country restored.
Fascism seeks to rejuvenate the nation based on a commitment to national community as an organic entity in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood.
So all the talk of the founders and tests of orthodoxy among the Tea Party calling out 'real' Americans. All the rage against immigration. All the hate flowing back and forth between liberals and conservatives who have depersonalized one another. All the rhetoric from neo-conservatives seeking endless war to expand the reach of American power. All of these things start to cast a particularly evil shadow when the population is looking for leadership and feeling hopeless watching an 'elite' group take financial control of government. We've saw these conditions handled this way seventy years ago, and we didn't like the result.
As Americans we need to not take our democracy for granted or assume that because we vote we're somehow on the path towards freedom. The patterns visible in our politics over the last few decades are telling us a story that we may not want to hear. But protecting our democracy involves being vigilant and thoughtful as to how we navigate these rough waters going forward lest we not only risk handing our country to a new monied aristocracy, but risk the rise of a new American nationalist movement and become the thing many of us have reason to fear most.
Now of course no political system is perfect. The US experiment with democracy prevented minorities and women from voting which runs counter to the pure principle, and the very fact that we use a representative democracy means our votes really only control who speaks for us: They are not an actual vote on actual policy. But neither of these deviations undermines the effort. No human enterprise is flawless and it is ridiculous to evaluate leadership or government based on the exceptions or individual failings just as it is would be to vindicate it by virtue of an individual success.
Like in all judgments, the important measure of a government's behavior is not what it say it is, or what it says it does, or even its specific successes or failures, but rather the patterns that repeat themselves as themes throughout. Once you turn to looking at the repeated behaviors that rise through the rhetoric you start to be able to really get an idea of what kind of government you have.
A Plutocracy, by definition, is rule by a wealthy or power provided by wealth. In an overt plutocracy the number of votes you get in politics is directly based on how much money you have. The old Italian merchant city-states were ruled this way such as Venice. The theory behind plutocracy is that the people who have the most wealth have the most to lose and are doing the most within the governed area, and therefore deserve a larger say in what happens.
So is the United States, are we a Democracy or a Plutocracy?
Now if we look at this from a democratic point of view, anyone can be president or run for office no matter where they come from if they win the hearts and minds of the people. Very democratic.
But In 2012, the elections across the board will likely cost over eight billion dollars with each party roughly raising a billion dollars for president alone. That would be one thousand millions. Each. And eight times that when including the house and senate races. While we love the idea of anyone becoming president, the fact is they have to be 'hired' by one of two political parties or they have to be ridiculously wealthy, themselves. This is not a job the parties sit and let filter out based on pure popularity either; They actively court, groom, and interview their candidates with vigor.
The congressional and senate races are also ridiculously expensive, regularly costing millions, and in recent years some have reached tens of millions. Now if you consider that the average household income is $50,223, it makes it pretty clear that the only people who can run for office are those either extremely wealthy themselves or endorsed by the well funded parties.
So are we democratic? Don't answer yet.
Presuming you're not independently wealthy, that means even if you do take the nomination of one of the parties that can fund you, the question arises where did they get their money? It's important because parties don't get their money for free. Sure, some of it comes from ideological alliances with voter donations in small amounts left to the absolute discretion of the party, but a lot of it comes from specific large volume donors that have expectations of their investment. After Citizen's United, the amount of these high volume conditional donors has gone through the roof just as the amount required to run has risen sharply.
So what it amounts to is that in order to be competitive in the American electoral system, you have to load yourself up with funding from interests besides your own that may or may not align with your constituents. The result of this is that your political agenda is quickly filled up with the expectations and 'costs' of receiving the money you needed to win office. This is clearly visible on both sides of the aisle as the new habit has become to stake out the issues you hold fast to in advance. What I mean is that officials who want to stand for something often have to do so right away – stake out the territory they hope to stand in before the lobbyists and donors tell them what position to hold. Doing so, of course, risks the inability to raise funds from groups who want that ground under their control which in turn may remove you from the game.
And turning down funding is US politics is unwise. 93% of all congressional elections are won by the person who spends the most, 94% of senatorial campaigns likewise go to the biggest spender. If the average Joe is living on $50,000 a year for his family and the average congressional seat costs $1,000,000 to run for that means that even if Joe has a comfortable savings account of a year's salary sitting around, he's in control of 5% of his election. 95% of his representation is owned by someone else.
Arguably we could say this is all just the mechanics of democracy in a capitalist society, but there are a few other things worth considering. The recent moves to restrict voting in the States based on no evidence of voter fraud, for example. Restricting voting away from non-moneyed people is one of the core final moves of a shift towards plutocracy. The voters being restricted are mostly students, the poor, and transients like migrant workers, or in other words, the poor. State intervention to fund and protect core business is also a final stage in plutocratic evolution, such as the wall street and even arguably the GM bailouts. In recent years, we have seen the removal of campaign finance reform and in recent months we have seen a government unable and unwilling to intervene on behalf of the suffering middle class due to pressures from powerful economic sources. Plutocracy also has wealth determining public policy, whereas democracy is the reverse with public policy determining the opportunities for wealth.
Too thready as evidence of a plutocratic shift, how about this: In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, the order of political priorities for Americans was, in order of importance: job creation (48%), Government Spending (16%), Health Care (11%), The Wars (8%), National Security (6%), Energy and Gas (4%), and Immigration (4%). As of today, 5 congressional committees are reviewing anti-abortion laws and not a single jobs plan, the president's or otherwise, on the table. This is not new. This is how Congress has been actually behaving despite what they say. For the now 11% approval rated congress it is par for the course where the people's opinion on everything from taxing the wealthiest Americans (78% approval) to closing tax loopholes (64% approval) are simply ignored. You have to have bipartisan support to reach these kinds of numbers, yet the Republicans in particular seem unfazed and continue to push for large business regulatory breaks and tax cuts.
So is the United States a plutocracy? Is that where we're going?
Clearly I'm writing this as a cautionary note. One that illustrates a slip in how our government works and the direction the country is headed in. You'll need to weigh for yourself whether you think we are still in a country that allows its citizens to govern themselves. There is reasonable evidence out there that we are not. And here's the real clincher: This is the piece that I think people should take a deep breath and read twice.
The road to plutocracy has a dangerous off-ramp. Because the nature of plutocracy is a shift of power away from the people into the hands of the wealthy either by design or just consequence of economic growth, the anger of the labor population is inevitable. If that anger at being disempowered grows too quickly and remains unaddressed, leaving patriotic Americans feeling like an elite class has corrupted and taken their government, there is a historically proven connection to another option by which the growth of that rising plutocracy can be crushed, the people restored to power, and the control of wealth in the wealth of the country restored.
Fascism seeks to rejuvenate the nation based on a commitment to national community as an organic entity in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood.
So all the talk of the founders and tests of orthodoxy among the Tea Party calling out 'real' Americans. All the rage against immigration. All the hate flowing back and forth between liberals and conservatives who have depersonalized one another. All the rhetoric from neo-conservatives seeking endless war to expand the reach of American power. All of these things start to cast a particularly evil shadow when the population is looking for leadership and feeling hopeless watching an 'elite' group take financial control of government. We've saw these conditions handled this way seventy years ago, and we didn't like the result.
As Americans we need to not take our democracy for granted or assume that because we vote we're somehow on the path towards freedom. The patterns visible in our politics over the last few decades are telling us a story that we may not want to hear. But protecting our democracy involves being vigilant and thoughtful as to how we navigate these rough waters going forward lest we not only risk handing our country to a new monied aristocracy, but risk the rise of a new American nationalist movement and become the thing many of us have reason to fear most.
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