>> We’re not “represented” by our elected politicians, we are ruled by them.
I don’t necessarily agree with your take on elitist control — Sherman Logan’s chaos concern seems more plausible — but truly indeed, we are NOT represented by those elected to office.
Food for thought...
It’s been quite a while since I spoke with Valerie Jarrett like Rupert Murdoch recently did.
My own Congressman is Scott Garrett. Very conservative, relatively speaking. But if a bunch of small business folks from my district give feedback to his office, and a he actually makes some moves on existing legislation or even presents his own bill, and this contains our local suggestions from us “sheeple”, by the time it passes into law - our wording will be squashed. What started out as being beneficial for small business will be twisted and contorted by poor Mr. Garrett and the rest of Congress into serving the interests of the elites - against the interests of us sheeple. I’m not even really saying it’s his “fault” per se, because if he constistently thwarted the efforts of the elites of this country, he’d be quickly gone from Congress. Perhaps he is really trying. But the influence of the elites’ “experts” is what rules the offices of members of Congress.
I haven’t tried getting one of my toadies elected to Congress yet, but somehow I don’t think that’s too realistic.
So... I see no evidence of “representation” of the sheeple in my district - whatsoever. And that’s with one of the best members of Congress.
As far as being “ruled”, I’ve yet to find any way to not be subject to the laws of this land. It’s difficult as a sheeple to not be subject to the laws of this land - it’s never been successfully achieved by a sheeple.
Of course, the elites are never subject to such a silly thing as the law; they’re only subject to doing the will of the master elites. Within those boundaries, they can do as they please. The law is just a minor inconvenience for the elites, which they let their lawyers handle.
But us sheeple are ruled by the law. The laws are created by our politicians. And our politicians’ laws are always in favor of the elites and they are increasingly actually against the interests of the sheeple.
Of course, the laws are always touted to be in the interest of the sheeple, but a careful understanding of the fine print reveals exactly the opposite.
The elites have simply allowed us sheeple a long leash for quite some time. They appear to be increasingly more blatantly anti-sheeple nowadays.
Representatives, as a group, like just about everybody else in the world, put what they see as their own interests ahead of everybody else's.
A representative's most important self-interest is in re-election. If those he is representing make it perfectly clear to him that certain positions will greatly reduce his chance of re-election, that position will quickly be dropped.
This is, to my mind, most obviously seen in the erosion of support in Congress for "gun control" in the last few decades. A few decades back, gun control was a consensus position, and only those from truly conservative districts opposed it strongly.
As public opinion has shifted on the issue, so did that in Congress. While it is probable reps from mildly right to mildly left districts still personally would like to see gun control passed, they are unwilling to imperil re-election by voting that way. So today only reps from truly liberal districts are willing to vote for gun control.
Most reps don't want to offend their constituents on either side of this issue, which is why gun control measures tend to not make it to an up or down vote.
The reason this has worked is not that reps really care about public opinion. If they did they'd pay equal attention to public opinion on other issues such as immigration.
It happened because the NRA and other grass-roots organizations were able to mobilize that public opinion into effective pressure groups that would actually swing elections. This is why the Left hates the NRA so much, opposing it and the public opinion it represents really will lose politicians elections.
For conservatives to be equally effective on other issues, such as immigration, where public opinion is on our side, requires similar organization. The problem is that mobilizing such effective grass roots support requires not just public opinion in its favor, it requires intense public opinion. That is present in the case of gun freedoms. Not so much with regard to immigration.