Thinking about this country will drive you totally fucking insane

Talking to my Dad on this father’s day I had some revelations about plutocracy, here they are:

Our democracy is actually, in practice, a plutocracy; the machinery of democracy has been co-opted by the super rich to serve their own interests. There is no need to evoke conspiracy theories or secret societies, rather, the mechanism is quite simple and I will call it: skewed constituency. Our elected leaders are in power to represent their constituents, which should be all people, and especially underrepresented groups (minority rule, minority rights as stated in the constitution). However, in our plutocracy the only constituents which (in most cases) have the power to influence the actions of elected officials are the super rich, hence the skewed constituency. If I were a journalist I would provide evidence to support this claim (this is largely what people like Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Moore do already).

The corporate media serves as a medium for the super rich to exert their power over elected officials. An elected official that does not pander to their super rich constituents can easily be disposed of by media circus scandals. (This exemplified by Weiner’s sex chatting leading to mass media exposure and resignation whereas blatant infidelity by conservative Gingrich is of little consequence). While officials are still elected by the people, the rich use the media like an axe hanging over their necks at all time, thus, any candidate that makes it far enough to be a serious contender for an election (be they conservative or liberal) has already pandered to the rich sufficiently to not be executed. This ensures that we always truly vote for the lesser of two evils. Positive enforcement of corporate-protecting memes in the media is rampant too, and no doubt are maintained and disseminated by the influence of the super rich (e.g. pundits continuing defense of the trickle down theory and deregulation for financial institutions, even though we know these are both disastrous ideologies for all but the richest 10%).

This basic understanding of the skewed constituency has two major implications: 1) corporations weald massive power over policies both foreign and domestic and that power is used to maintain and increase their riches, not to benefit the environment, the nation, or the greater than 90% of the relatively poor people living in it, 2) reversing the plutocratic tendencies of our political system is not a hopeless cause because the democratic machinery is still in place for the desires of the poor to be represented and enacted.

Human societies’ sense of morality changes rapidly with a continual trend for increased understanding and equity.

“The Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) moves on, so inexorably the we sometimes take it for granted and forget that the change is a real phenomenon in its own right”

“There are local and temporary setbacks [to the advancement of the moral Zeitgeist] such as the United States is suffering from its government in the early 2000’s”

Advancements in the moral Zeitgeist are facilitated by “…improved education and, in particular, the increased understanding that each of us shares the common humanity with members of other races and with the other sex — both deeply unbiblical ideas that come from biological sciences, especially evolution”

-Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion