Hence, an oligarchy, rule by a few, given our office holders are a tiny minority of the population.
Too, it was a more plutocratic republic in the past than it is now.
But since the fall of communism the plutes have taken the gloves off and, allied with cosmopolitan liberals, have used immigration and trade along with their neoliberal monetary and fiscal policies to beat the hell out of the working class and, indeed, the whole body of the ordinary folks of America.
Jimmy Carter and the party line
Twice
As Think Progress irrelevantly "explains,"
Author Martin Gilens found that “ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States.”
Meanwhile, “economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence.”
Recall that "ordinary citizens" have nothing with which to influence politics but their votes, or perhaps an ability to write a blog no one reads or letters to the editor of a paper or magazine no one reads.
Who does not know that such individuals and their individual votes cut no ice?
And in any case individually and in the mass they are only allowed to choose among candidates put before them by a process over which they have not the least control.
It was always thus.
Initiative and plebiscite do more than mere voting for officials to empower ordinary people, at least in the mass.
But these have no place in the federal government and terrify our post-progressive leftist hypocrites, anyway, who are forever trying to put their agenda beyond the reach of voters and, for that matter, even legislatures, just as far as they can.
None of this is new.
What's new is what I said.
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