democratosis
Today’s guest post is by Pete Karman of New Haven, who’s following letter was published in the Oct. 21 New York Times Magazine:
What Americans have in mind when they want other countries to be “democratic like we are” is our political system, in which voters get to choose between two corporatized parties, financed by the same moneyed interests that agree on major issues, while elections focus on lesser issues, personalities and smears. Policy options and citizen involvement are minimal. Candidates who stray beyond conventional rhetoric or propose more than cosmetic reforms are quickly relegated to the “extremes.” Voters are obliged to pick the lesser evil and so end up with more evil no matter who wins.
There is a thriving business of interchangeable corporate and government political operatives working to reproduce this system in other lands. Their obvious aim is not to spread actual democracy but to earn their money by setting up compatible, and therefore more easily dominated, outposts of the American empire. The rest of the world got wise to this a long time ago.
It’s a shame that this is still news to so many of America’s own citizens, that it’s so difficult to change, and that this environment engenders cynicism among its populace.