The American Political system is lousy. We live in a broken democracy. But it was never much more than this.
The myth of American greatness has failed
The myth that it was a real democracy was more and less powerful over the years. It seemed powerful at the beginning. In the last few decades it has become less and less powerful. Finally, with the new dynamic of new forms of communication, it have utterly failed.
Our culture is blind to this. But it’s pretty easy to fix.
I’ve spoken with over 500 people about this. One-on-one, in a conversation, people tend to see it. Only a handful, like 1 in 100, have seen glimpses from stuff I’ve written. You can say it’s my fault, that my writing is not compelling enough. Or you can say it’s people’s fault- they’re too inculcated with their own myths. Or you can blame the political establishment. They devote their lives to unwittingly trying to make a broken system work. And pretending that it does.
How about opening your mind once more to my writing?
What have I written to show that it’s lousy?
In America, the people have the ultimate power. But we can’t use it. Voting once every 2, 4 or 6 years for a personality doesn’t control anyone or anything. We can’t wield our power. So others pick it up and wield it. This is a lousy democracy. America is a lousy Republic. What you or I think, or want, doesn’t matter.
If it doesn’t matter what you or I think, then how does it feel to learn and try? Learning feels futile. It just increases our wanting a change. Trying is frustrating. So many stop trying to learn. Many stop trying to make changes. Many stop caring. We should expect things like: many Americans don’t vote. Many don’t even register to vote. Many don’t pay attention to facts or history.
There’s nothing wrong
In a sense, there’s nothing wrong. The results we have are a perfect match for the system we have. There’s only “something wrong” when you compare what we want to our myth that America is a Democracy and we have a great system of government.
The system we have is fine. We’re just not using it well because it’s incomplete. Our system was never designed to have political parties. Our system was never designed to be able to withstand corporations (which were banned in America by our founders.) And, there’s one big thing that was never, ever designed into our system. It’s just missing.
But when you look at our system, you see “our system.” You don’t see anything missing. The way you view politics is crucial to America continuing to be broken.