Posted on 05/11/2008 3:13:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Common delusions notwithstanding, the United States, I submit, is not a democracy—by which is meant a system in which the will of the people prevails. Rather it is a curious mechanism artfully designed to circumvent the will of the people while appearing to be democratic. Several mechanisms accomplish this.
First, we have two identical parties which, when elected, do very much the same things. Thus the election determines not policy but only the division of spoils. Nothing really changes. The Democrats will never seriously reduce military spending, nor the Republicans, entitlements.
Second, the two parties determine on which questions we are allowed to vote. They simply refuse to engage the questions that matter most to many people. If you are against affirmative action, for whom do you vote? If you regard the schools as abominations? If you want to end the president’s hobbyist wars?
Third, there is the effect of large jurisdictions. Suppose that you lived in a very small (and independent) school district and didn’t like the curriculum. You could buttonhole the head of the school board, whom you would probably know, and say, “Look, Jack, I really think….” He would listen.
But suppose that you live in a suburban jurisdiction of 300,000. You as an individual mean nothing. To affect policy, you would have to form an organization, canvass for votes, solicit contributions, and place ads in newspapers. This is a fulltime job, prohibitively burdensome.
The larger the jurisdiction, the harder it is to exert influence. Much policy today is set at the state level. Now you need a statewide campaign to change the curriculum. Practically speaking, it isn’t practical.
Fourth are impenetrable bureaucracies. A lot of policy is set by making regulations at some department or other, often federal. How do you call the Department of Education to protest a rule which is in fact a policy? The Department has thousands of telephones, few of them listed, all of which will brush you off. There is nothing the public can do to influence these goiterous, armored, unaccountable centers of power.
Yes, you can write your senator, and get a letter written by computer, “I thank you for your valuable insights, and assure you that I am doing all….”
Fifth is the invisible bureaucracy (which is also impenetrable). A few federal departments get at least a bit of attention from the press, chiefly State and Defense (sic). Most of the government gets no attention at all—HUD, for example. Nobody knows who the Secretary of HUD is, or what the department is doing. Similarly, the textbook publishers have some committee whose name I don’t remember (See? It works) that decides what words can be used in texts, how women and Indians must be portrayed, what can be said about them, and so on. Such a group amounts to an unelected ministry of propaganda and, almost certainly, you have never heard of it.
Sixth, there is the illusion of journalism. The newspapers and networks encourage us to think of them as a vast web of hard-hitting, no-holds-barred, chips-where-they-may inquisitors of government: You can run, but you can’t hide. In fact federal malefactors don’t have to run or hide. The press isn’t really looking.
Most of press coverage is only apparent. Television isn’t journalism, but a service that translates into video stories found in the Washington Post and New York Times (really). Few newspapers have bureaus in Washington; the rest follow the lead of a small number of major outlets. These don’t really cover things either.
When I was reporting on the military, there were (if memory serves) many hundreds of reporters accredited to the Pentagon, or at least writing about the armed services. It sounds impressive: All those gimlet eyes.
What invariably happened though was that some story would break—a toilet seat alleged to cost too much, or the failure of this or that. All the reporters would chase the toilet seat, fearful that their competitors might get some detail they didn’t. Thus you had one story covered six hundred times. In any event the stories were often dishonest and almost always ignorant because reporters, apparently bound by some natural law, are obligate technical illiterates. This includes the reporters for the Post and the Times.
Seventh, and a bit more subtle, is the lack of centers of demographic power in competition with the official government. The Catholic Church, for example, once influentially represented a large part of the population. It has been brought to heel. We are left with government by lobby—the weapons industry, big pharma, AIPAC, the teachers unions—whose representatives pay Congress to do things against the public interest.
Eighth, we are ruled not by a government but by a class. Here the media are crucial. Unless you spend time outside of America, you may not realize to what extent the press is controlled. The press is largely free, yes, but it is also largely owned by a small number of corporations which, in turn, are run by people from the same pool from which are drawn high-level pols and their advisers. They are rich people who know each other and have the same interests. It is very nearly correct to say that these people are the government of the United States, and that the federal apparatus merely a useful theatrical manifestation.
Finally, though it may not be deliberate, the schools produce a pitiably ignorant population that can’t vote wisely. Just as trial lawyers don’t want intelligent jurors, as they are harder to manipulate, so political parties don’t want educated voters. The existence of a puzzled mass gawping at Oprah reduces elections to popularity contests modulated by the state of the economy. One party may win, yes, or the other. But a TV-besotted electorate doesn’t meddle in matters important to its rulers. It has never heard of them.
To disguise all of this, elections provide the excitement and intellectual content of a football game, without the importance. They allow a sense of Participation. In bars across the land, in high-school gymns become forums, people become heated about what they imagine to be decisions of great import: This candidate or that? It keeps them from feeling left out while denying them power.
It is fraud. In a sense, the candidates do not even exist. A presidential candidate consists of two speechwriters, a makeup man, a gestures coach, ad agency, two pollsters and an interpreter of focus groups. Depending on his numbers, the handlers may suggest a more fixed stare to crank up his decisiveness quotient for male or Republican voters, or dial in a bit of compassion for a Democratic or female audience. The newspapers will report this calculated transformation. Yet it works. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time.
When people sense this and decline to vote, we cluck like disturbed hens and speak of apathy. Nope. Just common sense.
bump!
This one paragraph pretty much sums it up.
I'm 57 years old, a military vet (as you well know), and I've seen enough Presidents, like Reagan, Bush I & II, Clinton, and Carter, to know that a President can wield enormous power to create beneficial trends and send us nosediving into horrifying crises.
What this article skims over is this: we have entrenched bureaucracies in this country, many unionized, that can at times facilitate or block what a President and Congress want to achieve. By and large the huge government “machine” is liberal to the point of being de facto Fabian Socialism.
We have Federal departments that, per the Constitution, shouldn't even exist. THAT is the main impediment any Conservative President and Congress faces IMHO.
I think you just agreed with the author. Go to the link and read some of his other columns.
I’m taking exception to his assertion that there in NO differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. I hear that crap from populists Lou Dobbs & Bill O’Reily all the time. Say it often enough and voters believe it and stay away from the polls.
For example, show me a city where the Republicans have a corrupt political machine akin to that which exists in Democrat-controlled Chicago, spawning ground of Senator Obama.
Senator Obama is a radical left-wing lawyer married to a hate-spewing radical left-wing lawyer.
Senator McCain is a genuine war hero married to a nice woman who owns a beer distributorship.
There is no contest.
It is a perfect setup. The bureaucrats insulate the pols from citizen outrage. The very congressional clowns responsible for passing the laws that empower the commissars get credit for helping the abused serfs.
There's a recently published book by Kenneth Timmerman titled "Shadow Warriors" which buttresses your statement. I recommend it.
I've enjoyed Fred's columns for years, and have even read one of his books. I don't always agree with him and sometimes I'm bothered by what I see in the mirror he holds up. He's definately somebody I'd love to share a bottle of Old Overholt with.
My father bought Timmerman’s book after reading Rush’s interview of Timmerman in the Limbaugh Letter. He was so affected by the book that he could only read a couple of pages at a time before having to take a break and cool his anger.
Shadow government is right.
The problem I have with Republicans, and where I find them as aggravating as Democrats is that while they haven't "institutionalized" political corruption as have the Democrats, they more than make up for it in cravenness and hypocrisy. That's a large part of why we're in the situation we're in after a decade of complete control of the federal government. With few exceptions they almost never stood up to the Democrat left, and they all campaign telling us that Washington DC is a cesspool, and once they are in office they decide it's a jacuzzi.
<...they all campaign telling us that Washington DC is a cesspool, and once they are in office they decide it’s a jacuzzi.>
Agreed. We do as poor a job maintaining control over our cadres as the Democrats do. We can’t just talk the talk, but we have to walk the walk. No hypocrisy, no transgressions, Republicans have to be perfect.
Any woman working in an all male environment will tell you: you have to do better, be faster, smarter, and cleaner than the other people to get the prize THEY believe should be theirs because it’s a birthright. That is what we’re up against and most men just can’t see it.
I don't think it has as much to do with control, or expectations of perfection as it does with disenchantment when those we elect are not what they advertise. Allowing Ted Kennedy to dictate our education policies, spending on entitlements like the Prescription drug bill and other similar matters are the biggest part of why conservatives feel betrayed by the GOP. Speaking for myself, I feel great frustration by the failure of most elected Republicans to stand up to the Left. Like Rush Limbaugh often observed, the Republicans simply don't know how to behave like they've won an election. They want to fight a bunch of street thugs with Marquis De Queensbury rules.
IIRC Leftist Bureaucrats over the years have become entrenched within the all departments of our Nations Government. The Socialist/Democrats have protected them vigorously over the years. Politicians come and go, but the Bureaucrats are forever.
I’d say this promotes a bit of defeatism within the Republican ranks. They campaign with good intent, but once they step into the arena and are faced with the reality of the hungry Lions salivating to consume them, they retreat to safety.
The Leftists were in power for generations prior to 1994-95. Wondering exactly how the rules they created during that period cause the single directional results (always leftward movement) we have become accustomed to seeing unless we the people stand up and raise “H” as we did last year with “Shamnesty”. (Still moving Leftward though aren’t we?)
That would be interesting to look at, to find out why the Socialist/Dems hold so much power that even when out of power they succeed as happened throughout the period the Republicans were mildly successful after 1994.
“mildly successful” is relative.
If you read the book I mentioned in post 8, it will make you want to rend your garments. The politicised bureaucracy you mention is quite real, and one of the worst mistakes George Bush made in his first term was in not cleaning out the subversive Clintonoids in the CIA and the State Dept. Again, I must say that the GOP seems to think it can fight street thugs with Queensbury rules.
“...and one of the worst mistakes George Bush made in his first term was in not cleaning out the subversive Clintonoids in the CIA and the State Dept.”
Agreed, but in the past here at FR I had read an article (trusting in my old and admittedly flawed memory) that G.W. Bush made such an attempt, but even with a Republican majority in Congress was rebuffed at doing so. Something about legislation that tied other specifics to such an effort that made it disadvantageous to do so. I remember thinking at the time that would be something Slick and his Leftist minions would accomplish. This is what I’m remembering as I comment. A Socialist/Democrat Bureaucracy protected by some form of tangled legislation that cannot be untangled without completely dismantling portions of effective Government entity.
Wondering what all it entails.
I will be acquiring that book ASAP. I’ve heard much about it for some time now.
With regard to your "old and flawed memory," you're in good company.
If you do read the book, I'd be interested in hearing from you and your thoughts about it.
There’s a major clog and the sink is stopped up.
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