Even though there is no specific, universally accepted definition of 'democracy', equality and freedom have been identified as important characteristics of democracy since ancient times. These principles are reflected in all citizens being equal before the law and having equal access to power. For example, in a representative democracy, every vote has equal weight, no restrictions can apply to anyone wanting to become a representative, and the freedom of its citizens is secured by legitimized rights and liberties which are generally protected by a constitution.
This description supposedly characterizes the United States, and its citizens are continuously led to believe that that is the case. But there are two major and related respects in which the US currently abysmally fails to live up to this description. Although it is true that the good majority of US citizens have the right to vote for their representatives, it is absolutely NOT true that they all “exercise equal control over the matters which affect their interests”. That is because a great many of the representatives whom we elect represent the interests of those who give them money much moreso than they represent the interests of the vast majority of their constituents. In a country characterized by vast disparities in the wealth of its citizens, that means that a wealthy minority exercise vastly greater “control over the matters which affect their interests” than do ordinary people.
Those who believe our current government to be legitimate would counter that assertion by asking, “Then why not elect representatives who serve our interests? Almost all of us have the right to vote? What stops us from using that right to throw out those representatives who support the interests of a wealthy minority, and replace them with those who serve our own interests?”
What prevents us from doing that is that the wealthy have a tremendous amount of control over public communications in our country. They use their wealth to buy control of the “public” airways, which our government allows by granting them licenses to do so. They then use that control to shower praise on those who do their bidding, marginalize or destroy those who threaten their interests, and confuse American citizens as to where their interests lie. In short, they use the power of propaganda to keep most of us in great ignorance as to where our interests lie. And they disguise their propaganda as news.
Some would counter this by asking, “Then doesn’t the fault lie with the mass of citizens who allow themselves to be fooled?” Yes, to a certain extent it does. But that does not negate the fact that our whole system of government is in desperate need of reform. When enough Americans recognize that, they will demand that reform.
One thing that we must keep in mind when considering our current problems is that they are not new. They were greatly exacerbated by eight years of Bush administration misrule, but they did not start with Bush and Cheney. The citizens of America have bee duped FAR too long and have been giving up their power AS CITIZENS to the corporate interests that are trying to control the world.
All but the most naïve of the American citizenry know that the wealthy and powerful in our country routinely influence our local and national elections through huge campaign contributions. And they also know that they are generally well rewarded for their “contributions”. And they also know that bribery is presumably against the law in our country. Yet, on the rare occasion that our politicians are actually accused of bribery, our news media makes a great big deal over it, as if bribery is actually a rare event in American politics.
The end result is that a great many of our politicians do everything they can to make their wealthiest constituents happy with them, at the expense of everyone else. They do that with the knowledge that the voters they lose in doing so will be more than compensated for by the disinformation that will be paid for by their wealthiest constituents.
There are a few dots to connect here, but any reasonable assessment of American politics tells us that bribery is routinely used to buy and sell elections in our country. So routine is it that it is actually built into our system and legalized. But that fact is never overtly spoken of. To do so would imply that our system of government is as much or more an aristocracy than it is a democracy.
The root of the whole problem is that in our so-called “democracy”, individuals and corporations have the legal right to contribute money to political campaigns. Perhaps that fact sounds benign to some people. But when the ability of powerful corporations to contribute to political campaigns is virtually unlimited, then what we refer to as “contributions” are actually bribes – in every sense of the word. They are accurately referred to as bribes because our elected officials rely on those campaign contributions to get elected and to remain in office. Therefore, a great many of them simply sell themselves out to the highest bidder. Ordinary people don’t stand a chance.
“Money bundling” is the process whereby a single person, typically the CEO, owner, or other high level personage of a powerful corporation, collects money from hundreds of individuals and hands it over to a political candidate as a “campaign contribution”.
Although the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (better known as the McCain-Feingold Act) among other things established inflation-adjusted individual contribution limits for political campaigns, corporations use a loophole called “money bundling” to get around those limits. By this means, corporate officials collect huge donations, running in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and present the whole bundle to a political candidate. The political candidate doesn’t much care about the original source of the money. All he knows is that the corporation gave him the money. Since the corporation gave him the money, he owes a favor to that corporation. The ultimate effect can be as if there were no limit whatsoever on individual contributions.
There is no substantive difference between this process and bribery of an elected official. There is no need for a written or verbal agreement. It is simply understood that large campaign contributions will be repaid with favors by the office holder. What place does such a process have in a “democracy”?
Wake up people!
A government is an oligarchy, not a democracy, when elected officials can be legally bought and sold.
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