Riley Waggaman
Russia Insider
One of the more encouraging (?) developments in Acceptable American Discourse over the last five years or so has been the gradual acceptance, even among Serious Media Outlets, that American voters no longer have any real control over their own government, and more broadly, their collective destiny.
In April 2014, Princeton University published a study which found that "economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
Then in October of the same year, a Tufts University professor published a devastating critique of the current state of American democracy, "National Security and Double Government," which catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term "double government": There's the one we elect, and then there's the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy. The Boston Globe's write-up of the book was accompanied by the brutal headline, "Vote all you want. The secret government won't change." Imagine a headline like that during the Hope and Change craze of 2008. Yeah, you can't. Because nobody's that imaginative.
Yes, people are beginning to smell the rot — even people who watch television in hopes of not having to confront the miserable reality that awaits them once they turn off their 36-inch flat-screens. In September, Jimmy Carter warned Oprah Winfrey:
The latest canary in the coal mine is none other than ex-longtime GOP staffer turned best-selling author Mike Lofgren, whose new book, "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government," confirms what is already painfully apparent:
Russia Insider
One of the more encouraging (?) developments in Acceptable American Discourse over the last five years or so has been the gradual acceptance, even among Serious Media Outlets, that American voters no longer have any real control over their own government, and more broadly, their collective destiny.
In April 2014, Princeton University published a study which found that "economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
Then in October of the same year, a Tufts University professor published a devastating critique of the current state of American democracy, "National Security and Double Government," which catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term "double government": There's the one we elect, and then there's the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy. The Boston Globe's write-up of the book was accompanied by the brutal headline, "Vote all you want. The secret government won't change." Imagine a headline like that during the Hope and Change craze of 2008. Yeah, you can't. Because nobody's that imaginative.
Yes, people are beginning to smell the rot — even people who watch television in hopes of not having to confront the miserable reality that awaits them once they turn off their 36-inch flat-screens. In September, Jimmy Carter warned Oprah Winfrey:
"We've become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that I've ever seen in my life," the 90-year-old former president told Winfrey.The live audience were probably hoping for free Oprah cars. Instead, an ex-president told them that their democracy is in the gutter. What a bummer.
The latest canary in the coal mine is none other than ex-longtime GOP staffer turned best-selling author Mike Lofgren, whose new book, "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government," confirms what is already painfully apparent:
The deep state has created so many contradictions in this country. You have this enormous disparity of rich and poor; and you have this perpetual war, even though we're braying about freedom. We have a surveillance state, and we talk about freedom. We have internal contradictions. Who knows what this will fly into? It may collapse like the Soviet Union; or it might go into fascism with a populist camouflage.Read more
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