Destroying Democracy From The Inside Out

We do live in historically relevant times. You and I are unfortunate enough to have front row seats to the dismantling of the American experiment from the inside out. Angry, brainwashed, short-sighted white American voters managed to do what no military power could accomplish, and write the last chapter to the story of a country founded on democratic ideals that were eventually subverted by greed, racism and hubris. Everything the founding fathers had hoped for, everything countless Americans died for during the Civil War, everything civil rights protestors marched for, every great social advancement Americans ever struggled for, will be under attack over the next four years by Donald Trump. And with a Republican Congress, there is little hope of stemming the fascist onslaught.

Every new day brings the announcement of another unholy appointment by Trump. His administration will be a who’s who of democracy’s enemies, a cadre of conservative ideologues who live in a reality of their own making ripe with Aryan fantasies, internment camps and public executions. Trump and his cohorts are convinced they can do the impossible and turn back the clock of human progress to an imagined pre-Civil War era of bucolic mansions and happy slaves.

Trump is the great white hope. His life of privilege and excess mean nothing to his followers because it’s his mission that counts, making America white again. In the process that is now underway, we clearly see his list of priorities for America: Destroy public education, eliminate environmental protections, give Wall Street the keys to the White House, revive the drug war, stack the Supreme Court with conservatives, crush dissent, undo the welfare safety net, privatize Social Security and Medicare, substitute news with propaganda and, perhaps of utmost importance, fill his personal coffers to overflowing.

There were a few people who saw this coming, but their message reached a small minority of citizens who bother to look beyond the corporate media for information. The prophets were never taken seriously and had now power. No one in Trump’s America wants to hear from any smarty pants know-it-all.

We are stepping into a new world thanks to our president-elect, where the messiness of democracy will simply be dismissed in favor of one man’s blind faith in his own decision-making capabilities. Who needs a constitution when you have Donald Trump?

R.I.P. Participatory Democracy

This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, but if you’re just waking up from a twenty-year coma, I hate to be the one to tell you, but American democracy passed away while you were gone. A recent study by two university professors has confirmed what many of us already new intuitively: The average American has virtually no say in how our country is run anymore.

The new study, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," will be published in the fall 2014 edition of Perspectives on Politics. The authors are Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University. Simply put, when compared to the power of the wealthy elite, corporations and organized interest groups, the influence of the average American is, “non-significant, near-zero level.”

The elites and interest groups, with their truckloads of money and armies of lobbyists, have the greatest impact on government policy in Washington. And when their desires are at odds with those of the majority of Americans, which is often, guess who wins? It ain’t you and me.

Is there any question why so many citizens have stopped participating in elections? Year after year, election after election, we signal our desires and concerns at the ballot box, only to have the door of the White House and Congress shut in our faces. Recent Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United have clearly made the problem worse, turning our government over to the highest bidder. We are now “non-significant” entities, allowed by our overseers to go through the motions of living in a democracy, but shut out of the real policy debates and decisions.