A quick reflection on "democracy"

[RememberMee]

Originally Posted by stillkit

Major factors in favor of democracy:

1. Nobody follows a voter into the booth and forces them to vote. No PAC members, no corporate bag men, no party operatives. Voters are completely and totally free to vote their conscience. No amount of money can FORCE a voter to vote differently than he wishes.

Nope, voting for Obama or Romney, Bush or Gore, voting for one preselected guy or another does NOT allow me to vote my consciousness.

2. Any citizen can file to run for any office for which they are qualified. After that, it's up to them to mount an effective campaign. "Regular" people run for local offices, state legislatures, the federal House and Senate and even the Presidency all the time. The great majority of those office holders had humble beginnings, just like yours and mine. Most of them did not start out as elite politicians. The difference between them and us is that we lack the drive and dedication to make it happen.

Don't be so naive. Yup, ruling class recruits a lot of its political front men from "humble beginning" crowd. So what? Humble guys need to prove themselves in the eyes of stakeholders whose and only whose interests they will promote throughout their political careers. Those who don't comply will be disposed of warp speed. Frequently "humble guys" are "groomed" for many, many years before the launch (see Obama). Bush II was not qualified to run a gas station on his own. So please, leave "qualified" to civics texbooks. "Any citizen can file" but only citizens who can recruit support of monied elites can run successfully (on federal, state and local levels).

3. The court system still works in instances were abuse of our democracy happen. The wheels of justice may grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine and so long as our courts retain their independence, our democracy will survive and flourish.

You mean the court system who abused veneer of our democracy by appointing Bush II as a president in 2000 after disregarding blatant abuses of election process in FL? You are a true believer, aren't you? Court system is made of and serves to upper 10% of the populace. It safeguards against the remote possibility of lower classes voting undesirables in.

4. Nobody has yet devised a better form of governance. As Winston Churchill put it: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

Who says? If you want a spectacle and illusions of you "making a difference", yup, nothing can beat modern democracy. If you want to have a say, democracy is not any different than any other political system. Remember history? American Republic was designed SPECIFICALLY to prevent lower social classes from voting in their representatives in the positions of power. From DAY 1, American democracy was social pacifier and spectacle designed to keep power in the hands of elites and illusions in the heads of rubble. Nothing changed since then. That what makes American democracy so stable, it's democracy only in the name. Regrettably, more or less genuine democracy is incredibly volatile way to run society. Just compare more genuine Western European democracy to the American serendipity of illusions.

If you, or anybody else, feels disenfranchised it's only because you don't bother to work the system to your benefit. The system still works. It's not democracy's fault that we're too lazy to be involved.

Yup, it works for people who run it, for 200+ years already.

[Danno3314]

Originally Posted by Green Onions

Turnout was 63.0% in 2008 and 41.0% in 2010.

Try looking at a few other election years...the average is what I said.