You Can Stop Worrying About Losing Our Democracy
It’s already gone
If you are anything like me, you’ve been constantly worrying about losing our democratic form of government. But I’ve realized that we can stop worrying about that.
It’s already gone.
I grew up and have lived my life believing that I lived in a democracy. For years I’ve participated in the most salient aspect of our form of government — voting to elect others to represent us, the citizens. We entrust those elected to do what is in our best interest and the country’s best interest.
But for years now this has become the grand illusion. It is much more difficult to find examples of our elected officials doing what is best for us. Most of the time, it seems that they are doing what is best for themselves.
But these elected officials are not simply focused on their self-interest. Many of them are working tirelessly to subvert the will of the people and to “fix” the system so that they don’t even have to pretend that they care about the citizenry. That of course includes subverting the very essence of our democracy by making it more difficult to vote and, if possible, excluding some citizens from voting altogether.
So how did it come to this? There are probably quite a few reasons but I think there is one critical culprit — money. And it’s not just money. It’s capitalism.
The problem stems from the fact that capitalism and democracy are not the same. That may seem ridiculously self-evident. Yet, like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, we’ve been subjected to intense brainwashing throughout our lives and now the two are completely linked.
Just take a look at the two concepts. Democracy, according to Webster, “refers not to an economic system but to a system of government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised through a system of direct or indirect representation which is decided through periodic free elections.”
“Supreme power is vested in the people.” That’s the way it’s supposed to be, right? You know the whole, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” according to Abraham Lincoln? But, when was the last time it felt like you had supreme power? I bet not anytime recently.
Capitalism on the other hand, “refers to an economic system in which a society’s means of production are held by private individuals or organizations, not the government, and where products, prices, and the distribution of goods are determined mainly by competition in a free market” (thanks again to Webster).
Democracy calls for the citizenry to elect representatives to speak for them and their needs in making decisions to be carried out by the government. That being said, one of the roles of doing what is best for the citizenry is to create laws that govern the private individuals and organizations that are drivers of the economy. That’s a necessary role for government because what’s best for the citizens and the overall interests of the country is not necessarily the same as what is best for private individuals and organizations.
Since the inception of the country, laws have been enacted with the best interests of the citizenry in mind. Yet, in recent years many of them have been watered down or discarded. This has blurred the lines of separation between the role our government is supposed to play and the economic interests of individuals and organizations.
Those lines have blurred to the point that our democratic form of government and our capitalistic economic system has become the same. So much so that we now operate under, not a democracy, but rather what is referred to as “political capitalism.”
Political capitalism is an “economic and political system in which the economic and political elite cooperate for their mutual benefit. The economic elite influence the government’s economic policies to use regulation, government spending, and the design of the tax system to maintain their elite status in the economy. The political elite are then supported by the economic elite which helps the political elite maintain their status; an exchange relationship that benefits both the political and economic elite.”
Any of that sound familiar? Maybe because that’s the way things have been working for a good many years now?
Guess who first implemented such a system? “Political capitalism as an economic system was explicitly implemented in the fascist and corporatist economies of Germany and Italy between the World Wars.”
Our democracy has been subverted by the rich and powerful making it easier for them to continue to do as they please under the guise of democracy. Elected officials work for them, not us.
It isn’t hard to see this. It happens in plain sight every day. So don’t worry. You can relax.
Our democracy is long gone.
