Whatever Happened to Democracy?

In present day America vast amounts of the national wealth are owned by a tiny fraction of people; imperial military bases straddle the globe; and five Supreme Court justices can make social revolutions in defiance of law, tradition, religion, and common sense.  A private banking cartel controls the credit and currency of the country; the flow of information is effectively controlled by a few unknown oligarchs; there is an unpayable government debt that can never be paid, is partly owned by foreign powers, and will economically enslave our descendants; there is no civilized democratic political debate but only advertising campaigns competing for market share.

Those of us whose experience goes back a way into the last century, can remember when “democracy” was the main theme of American discourse.  A million tongues proudly and repeatedly declared that America was the Democracy, exemplar and defender of that sacred idea to all the world.  Hardly anyone dared to question that sentiment.  It saw us through two world wars and the Cold War.

Of course, praise of “democracy” was not always sincere, and the term never had a very strict and clear definition.  But most Americans thought of it in Lincoln’s sonorous phrase:  government of, by, and for the people.  In practical terms that seemed to mean majority rule.  In that case Lincoln was not sincere because he headed the party of a large minority that seized control of the federal government and made brutal war against another large minority of the people.

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