The Lot Of Democracy
The version of democracy that we have had in the West, of late, has not served a lot of people all that well. The lot of democracy. This is why we have the current phenomenon of Donald Trump plaguing the world right now. Lots of folk in the United States wanted someone to shake things up and deliver something better for them. Be careful what you wish for. This is because things can, indeed, get a lot worse. Trump is not the champion of the ordinary American, as he professes at times. Trump is no Bernie Sanders. He is someone who has never served a constituency. Trump only serves himself.
Democracy & A Lot Of Money
Democracy in America has been railroaded by the wealthy to serve their interests, often, at the expense of the working poor. Members of Congress have been bought and sold by billionaires and corporations at the expense of the American public. It has cost them their representation. The original Athenian conception of democracy was a body of men chosen individually by lot to serve the Athenian state. Thus, it supposedly avoided the emergence of professional politicians and their vulnerability to corruption. Imagine the President of the United States being chosen by lot.
“Though considered the most democratic method of allocating citizens to office in Classical Greece, sortition (selection by lot) has never been adopted on a large scale by modern democracies (except for juries) and has fallen into oblivion.
Usually when we think about the differences between the ancient (Greek) democracy and modern democracy, the first aspect that comes to our mind is that the former was a direct democracy, while its modern version is representative. In classical demokratia the citizens themselves exercised their sovereignty by voting in the Assembly (ekklesia), whereas in modern democracy the citizens empower elected representatives to act in their name—with the rare exception of a referendum or plebiscite.”
The lottery in modern times is all about, hopefully, winning a lot of money. Whereas in ancient times civic power was allocated via a lottery.
American Democracy Serving Lots Of The Wealthy
Did you know that the income tax rate for the very wealthy in the US was around 90% just after WW2? Now, it is around 30 to 40%.
“In 1963, President John Kennedy, himself the product of one of America’s grandest fortunes, asked Congress to drop the nation’s top tax rate down to 65 percent. Congress would mostly oblige, and that top tax rate would sink to 70 percent in 1965. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and his friends on Capitol Hill would shove that rate down even further, first to 50 and then to 28 percent.
This top tax rate then inched up to 31 percent in 1991 and has been bouncing around in the 30s ever since. The current top-bracket rate: 37 percent.”
JFK is remembered as this almost saintly president, in large part because he was brutally murdered whist still a relatively young man. However, his father was a very wealthy oligarch and getting elected to the presidency don’t come cheap in America. Dues had to be paid, I imagine. Reagan, as most Republicans did, served the interests of the wealthy. It is, always fascinating to try and comprehend how the vast majority of middle class and poorer Americans get conned into seeing the top tax rates slashed by more than half. I mean, whose interest is that in? Stupid is as stupid does.
American Disengagement With The Democratic Process
The lot of democracy. Voting is not compulsory in the US, so disengagement with the democratic system is popular. It is easy to gull those not paying attention. Negative campaign ads are the meat and potatoes of American electioneering. Throwing mud and disparaging your political opponent are art forms in the US. Big advertising spends have traditionally defined winning campaigns.
“In the 2020 U.S. presidential race, Democratic candidates spent a total of roughly 3.16 billion U.S. dollars, more than any other election. “
The new player in the American version of the democratic process is social media. Online influence affecting elections is big and getting bigger all the time. The Russians and their bots have been going about their nefarious business in US elections since 2016. Other overseas actors are, also, players in the subterfuge stakes, according to the FBI. China, Iran and North Korea to name a few identified. The Internet is a very fraudulent space and the majority of sites and identities are not what they make out to be. There are way more machines than humans inhabiting the online realm.
The lot of democracy is not, always, a happy one. The Big Steal was the Big Lie and the 2020 presidential election will go down in history for all the wrong reasons. Fundamentally, this is all about power and the getting of it. Oligarchs are not new, as they have been around since ancient Greek and Roman times. They were a problem for the many back then and they are a problem for most of us now. Trump and Musk are deeply corrupt. The global influence of these kleptocrats is to lower the standards and expectations of and around governments. They are a bad lot.
“Donald Trump’s regime in America is breaking the law on an industrial scale. There are more than 200 legal actions currently taken out against the Trump administration by aggrieved parties in the United States. Thus, fighting the normalization of Trump is an issue on this basis. People get used to the outrage and are deadened in some way to the gross injustices. However, the behaviour of ICE takes the cake in the outrage stakes in their total disregard for judicial due process. The snatching of Americans off the streets by masked men bearing no identification or documentation and detaining them for weeks and months is abhorrent in the extreme.”
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
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