What Happens to Democracy when Nobody Cares enough to Preserve Its Efficacy? — The Triumph of the Greedy Minority Is Probably Inevitable

16 April 2014

Regarding the American public’s absent allegiance to maintaining an effective democracy

Not very many people seem to care that an oligarchy rules us, nor that our votes are of insignificant importance in directing the future. As long as we can stuff our faces and amuse ourselves, the loss of meaningful control over our destinies apparently does not to chafe enough to act in its preservation.

This complacent attitude contrasts markedly with Thomas Jefferson’s passionate observation that:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787, Monticello.org (visited 16 April 2014)

Our lassitude encourages me to wonder whether we deserve a working democracy

My tentative conclusion is that we don’t. We are too lazy and too little committed to exercising the responsibilities that intelligent self-direction would require.

As a result, it is not sociologically surprising that more ambitious and greedily driven folks rise to the top of political and economic power. Once there, they easily control our combined destinies.

Consider the recent Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page political study

As assessed by Larry Bartels:

Gilens and Page analyze 1,779 policy outcomes over a period of more than 20 years.

They conclude that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

[T]he collective preferences of ordinary citizens had only a negligible estimated effect on policy outcomes, while the collective preferences of “economic elites” (roughly proxied by citizens at the 90th percentile of the income distribution) were 15 times as important.

“Mass-based interest groups” mattered, too, but only about half as much as business interest groups — and the preferences of those public interest groups were only weakly correlated (.12) with the preferences of the public as measured in opinion surveys.

In other words, our purported majoritarian democracy is ineffectual and an oligarchy rules in its place.

Gilens and Page are correct

The Supreme Court reestablishs Robber Baron culture at every opportunity, while simultaneously infringing our right to vote.

Powerful financial and corporate interests rob us blind, while government:

(a) makes rules that let them do it

and, afterward

(b) ensures that no one is prosecuted — even for transgressions outside the already laughably minimal order.

The Military Industrial Complex regularly begins and continues wars that kill our troops and innocents abroad, in endeavors that are against the nation’s survival interests.

An elitist Congress prances around fomenting vitriolic chatter — without exhibiting meaningful productivity — while simultaneously guaranteeing its members an easy afterward slide into well-remunerated lobbying activities.

At the state and local level, the two self-interested political parties impose election district gerrymandering, so as to keep themselves in office forever and ever.

While this metaphorical looting is going on, we sit by — at best tuning in to the inane parts of the cultural messages that we are stupid enough to think are supremely important

We have, for the most part, become the equivalent of more stupid than average sheep.

Seen through the influential people’s eyes

One can see why powerful folks look askance at the public’s repeatedly demonstrated ineptitude. There is nothing quite so greed-captivating as “The Rabble” giving away its assets to those who do not need them.

Republican Porkers must especially enjoy successfully misdirecting voters to volubly plug for them and against their own humble person’s self-interest. Democratic Lard Carriers must marvel at their ability to camouflage greed with Hot Air Liberalism.

Illusory democracy

American democracy is, these days, an illusion. Form, only. No substance.

It is true that we have the right to speak, but it is not effectual speech. Most of us have the right to vote, but that does not constitute meaningful policy selection.

We go through the motions of democracy, without having even a speck of a hand on its tiller.

The moral? — when most of us don’t care, what does the future look like?

Oligarchical. Which may ultimately be the one true definition of the human societal condition.

PeteFree.com

What Happens to Democracy when Nobody Cares enough to Preserve Its Efficacy? — The Triumph of the Greedy Minority Is Probably Inevitable