Green Medina

The United States is not a democracy. Now some smart alecks out there might say, “Yeah, it’s a representative republic.” But what if I were to tell you that wasn’t true either. In a republic, the people at least elect their own representatives.

Yet in our system, 0.02% of Americans nominate the candidates who are eligible to run for the general election. Does that sound like representation? I think not.

In the video above, Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig makes the case that our democracy has become corrupt with money, leading to an inequality in which only 0.02% of the United States population actually determines who’s in power. Allow me to explain.

The political mastermind behind this current system was a man named Boss Tweed (1823-1878). Boss Tweed had a Tammany Hall political party. He used to say, “I don’t care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating.” Nomination is the key.

This conception of politics has an obvious logic to it. If you control the nomination, the candidates are going to care more about what the nominators think, than the ultimate election. This genius theory for destroying democracy is called Tweedism. Any two stage process where the Tweeds get to nominate and the rest get to select is called Tweedism. The results of Tweedism are going to produce a system that is responsive to the Tweeds only.

There are examples of Tweedism throughout U.S. history. In 1923, in the Texas primary, they said that only whites could vote. This produced a democracy responsive to whites only. This is a system that is obviously wrong and anti-democratic.

Now we need to take a critical look at how this is happening here in modern times. In the first stage of our elections, there is what Professor Lawrence Lessig calls a “money primary” that determines which candidates are allowed to run in the voting elections. This money primary takes time. Candidates such as members of Congress and candidates for Congress spend anywhere between 30%-70% of their time dialing for dollars, looking for funding. In this process, they adjust their views and their decisions to primarily reflect what will get them the most money.

When Leslie Byrne from Virginia ran for Congress, she says that a colleague told her, “Always lean to the green.” (And this wasn’t about environmentalism). So this fundraising process is a primary in itself, its a money primary.

In 2014 the top 100 gave as much as the bottom 4.75 million funders to congressional campaigns. Four hundred families gave half the money to election contributions and Super PACs. As Lawrence Lessig states, this is not American Democracy. This is Banana Republic Democracy.

The decade following the 2010 Citizen’s United ruling of the Supreme Court has been the most expensive in the history of U.S. elections, with more corporate money in politics than ever before. This is money that is split evenly between the Democratic and Republican party. And in 2022 this trend continued, with only a tiny percentage of Americans giving enough money to candidates to actually be impactful.

The following study shows that as economic elite and special interest group support for a political issue goes up, the chances of it passing politically went up.

In contrast, the graph for the average voter was a flat line. What this means is that whether the average voter supports an issue by 0% or 100%, this doesn’t change the probability of the issue being passed. Meaning, what the average voter feels doesn’t matter at all.

(Source Here)

In other words, as this study states, the preferences of the average American have a near zero effect, or statistically insignificant impact on public policy. This is why again and again, the U.S. government gets away with passing legislation despite the fact that the majority of Americans may not support it. In other words, the average U.S. citizen has no relationship to what their actual national government does (local government is a different story).

This is why despite the fact that the affordability of health care is a top issue for American voters, health care remains expensive, inadequate and out of reach for millions of Americans.

Tweedism is a corruption of the design of the representative democracy. When Madison gave us our representative democracy, he described it as a system that should be dependent on the people alone. And he also clarified, “Not the rich more than the poor.”

In addition to the control of money, there is also gerrymandered congressional districts where the politicians are picking the voters rather than the voters picking the politicians. Democrats and Republicans both play this game, giving themselves “safe seats” most of the time.

Voting itself is also difficult. Working families often can’t afford to take time off to vote, especially if they have to wait in long lines. This is a poll tax via money and time. And this poll tax is strongly correlated with race. Black and brown districts are less likely to have the resources they need to go to the polls. We should make voting day a national holiday so it’s easier for everyone to vote.

Most Americans want our government to address the issues of climate change, social security, universal health care, student debt, and inflation. Most Americans are also tired of infinite military imperialism and want to focus on our collapsing infrastructure and non existent social safety net, not sending cluster bombs abroad.

Currently we have a political system that betrays representational democracy, and both Democrats and Republicans are guilty.

At this point you may ask, Well if the rich control everything, why does the public still have elections?

This is the genius of today’s corporatocracy. And that’s what our system is, corporatocracy. It’s not democracy. To understand what something is, we must call it by it’s real name. The best way for the corporations and financial elite to maintain control is to give the public the illusion of control. If we knew that we had no real power and that the people ruling over us didn’t care about our interests, we would revolt. But giving us the illusion of choice , and maybe a marginal issue here or there we can vote on, keeps us complacent.

It’s much like a parent controlling a child. They say, “Eat your vegetables or you are going to your room.” It seems like there is a choice here, but there isn’t. The child is going to eat their vegetables, or they are going to go to their room and then eat their vegetables later. The parent gives the illusion of choice in order to gain control.

Now is not the time for complacency. Climate collapse is coming. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the doomsday clock (likelihood of nuclear war) closer to midnight than ever before. The human race might not make it, and we’re passively allowing our current system to drive us over a cliff, driven apart by cultural wars and the corporate propaganda called “news.”

It’s time for radical change. There needs to be a massive political movement pushing for democracy, environmentalism, economic equality, and an end to America’s military imperialism around the globe. Peaceful political revolution is the most ideal option at this point. Peaceful revolution is possible. It was done in the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement. It was done in the Indian protests against the British. This is the point made by Cornel West and Chris Hedges.

Peaceful revolution is the last option left, before violent revolution (which often happens by entropy in history), or just a complete collapse of the system into endless levels of disaster and dysfunction.

Don’t lose hope. You can make a difference still on the local level of politics. But this post is meant to open your eyes to what is going on on the national level. This is why we have two candidates that most people don’t even like. The system is rigged, rigged against you, rigged against me, rigged against anyone who isn’t a billionaire. It’s time for change.