What the U.S. has become over the years does provide us with plenty of
grist for the debate mill. Is is a democracy? Is it not? Is it an
oligarchy, or not? Is it a corporate state or is it a fascist military
state? Good questions. From the way the country is structured it's clearly
a democracy, a representative one with many levels and many degrees of
democratic participation. But what's the difference between the de jure
and the de facto? In my view, we have moved into a condition of oligarchy.
This is because while we go through a lot of motions that make it appear
the country is doing things in a democratic way the truth is the wants of
the population are rarely heeded by those who are in power. The small
group who make up the oligarchy are all the interests that are making the
government do what they want. Be it the military, the corporations, the
rich, or whatever groups you choose, they comprise the oligarchy and they
control what is decided in the country, not the people. They few are
deciding things in this country, not the many. At least I think so. If I'm
right that plainly fits the definition of an oligarchy, rule by the few.
Too bad isn't it? It would have been nice to live in a real democracy
where the government followed the will of the people, not the few. As
Franklin told us, he gave us a republic, if we can keep it. Apparently, we
could not.

Hawke

Jeez, I thought I just shook off this ungainly thread. g As that reference
I posted earlier says, keeping the terms straight -- and one's thinking
about them -- requires distinguishing between structures and outcomes. If a
country has a representative democracy but the people don't exercise their
authority, whether it's because they're vulnerable to the arguments of
corporate interests, or because they're completely passive, waiting for
their candidates to be presented to them on a silver platter, it's still a
representative democracy. As long as they're eligible to vote and their vote
caries equal weight to the votes of others, the system is fundamentally
democratic.

Now, if you want to argue that entrenched interests have acquired the power
to overwhelm the system, that's another issue. You don't help matters by
calling it an "oligarchy." That just confuses the structure of the system
with the way people happen to vote.



I think that is what I was getting at. By all the rules that determine
what kind of government we have there's no doubt we have a democratic
country, a republic, or a representative democracy, whatever you want to
call it. In theory that is how it is supposed to work too. But if that
is all just a sham and the system actually works exactly like an
oligarchy doesn't that mean it really is an oligarchy? Like some say,
just asking. It seems what we have is one thing structurally and
something different in outcome.

Back in the day when Athens was in control of the Greek city-states they
set up governments in other cities in their area that were ostensibly
democratic but in reality were nothing but puppet regimes. So it wasn't
a matter of what they were supposed to be but what they really were. If
what we have going here is the same kind of thing then maybe we should
stop calling our country a democracy and admit that is has turned into
an oligarchy, at least in practice. It's just something I've been
thinking about. I lean towards calling a thing by what it is in
operation not by what it is in theory. Then what if it acts one way one
time and the other way another? Confused yet?

Hawke