Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Aside From Hacking, What Other Recourse Do We Have to Access Our Government?


CounterPunch |  To sum up: The Founders were wisely concerned about the potential dangers of factions and partisanship and were aware of how previous democracies had failed. They believed that  a representative form of government would obviate the unavoidable tendencies toward partisanship and the ills to which it could lead.

Their concerns were justified. Their solution has been an utter failure! 

The very worst version of the Founders’ fear has been realized. The faction we know as the 1 percent, with the help of the Republican and Democrat partisans, currently administers government policies “adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”, to put it lightly!

Since these partisans are responsible for our current dreadful circumstances, just as the Founders warned, how can we possibly rely upon them to correct the situation?

The representative government that was supposed to protect us from the evils of factions and partisans has collapsed. It has been subverted by the very elected representative body that the Constitution created for our protection!

Today, our two party form of government resembles a baseball game where the players of both teams are also the umpires. Having nullified voters, the parties have no independent check on their behavior or performance. Imagine that the two baseball  teams have the same owner who chooses  their players with no input from the fans (unlike the All Star game, where fans get to vote for the starting lineups). Having a common owner, all ticket sales go into the same pocket, so it doesn’t matter who wins. One nominal team must “lose”, but, still, everybody wins. So it is with the Dems and Repubs. Election wins and losses are not important, because the owners always win. Different in name only, they have no competition and are secure in their shared power. Backed by incredible corporate and private wealth, they believe they have no worries. And as long as their adversarial charade continues to fool and divide a substantial portion of the public, they do not.

We voters have effectively lost all control of our government. Our votes are managed, manipulated, gerrymandered, hacked and thrown in the trash. Our representatives avoid, disregard and disrespect us. They lie to and deceive us. They either openly show disdain , or they only pretend to be working for us. Our representative body is giving us the middle finger. What other recourse do we have to access government in our own country?

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