Democracy in America in the 21st Century

“Where Do We Go From Here?”
Democracy was meant to be government by the rule of the people. Athens is most famous for being the ancient city-state to represent democratic government and in a way the city-state was best situated for democracy: the people were educated and keen on performing their civic duty—at least for a generation or two. By the time the playwright Aristophanes came along, some Athenians were shirking their civic duty to the extent that the satirist penned his most attack on Athenian complacency. The point is that democracy is only as effective as the people within the community are at performing their civic duty. When the very concept of civic-mindedness is lost or when the community becomes so large that it is impossible for people to govern directly, the concept of democracy can become a screen hiding a much more nefarious system of power like what is seen today, where various organs of the state operate unseen and through unelected (i.e., appointed) officials who control the strings of government and have their pockets padded by insiders and lobbyists of various big businesses. Democracy is the buzzword of many an authoritarian government the world over today, yet democracy is hardly seen in reality. Both Mansbridge and Dahl talk about a free market system—and Friedman essentially advocates for this because it is a system in which capital best thrives—but the reality of the world today is that the markets are not free, interventionism has run amok, and the world is now living under a global command economy whose terms are dictated by a triumvirate of central banks, government leaders and big business owners. Everyone else is simply told what to do and expected to like, and one should need no more example of this fact than that latest bailout of corporations and hedge funds across the board this April, with the pretense for this corporate bailout being COVID 19. The challenge facing democracy in the world today is the threat of authoritarianism that looms over government via the integration of central banking, organs of the state and big business circumventing the will of power and the democratic means of control.
Authoritarianism was always a problem for democracy, even in Athenian society, because democracy ultimately is an idealistic form of government that tends toward entropy rather than towards stability or control. There are always going to be and there have always been individuals and organizations seeking to exploit imbalances within systems, and democracy as a form of government is not without its limitations. In America, the conflict between democracy as a form of government (best exercised at the local level—i.e., at the state level) and authoritarianism or centralized power emerged at the beginning days of the nation. The debate was between the Federalists (who called for central power in the form of a federal government) and the Anti-Federalists (who called for autonomous governments among each and every state). The Federalists won the day and the centralized government, which started off small, grew over the decades and centuries into a behemoth of a machine with multiple organs now influencing various sectors unseen by most people. The Civil War occurred before a century of this system had even concluded, and the cause was the same—tension between state (local, democratic government) and federal (centralized government). Again, the federal power won out.
There are some examples of states still exercising independent systems of government at the local level—for instance, in terms of legalizing cannabis in numerous states even though it is still considered a schedule one narcotic by the federal government, or in terms of states like California designating sanctuary cities to the chagrin of the federal administration in power—but these instances are small in the much larger scheme of things. Today’s world is governed by central banks, organs of state that persist from one administration to the next, and big business. Any hope for democracy essentially died in the 19th century—but really it was dead from the get-go and Jefferson knew as he was the one who predicted a tyranny of the Judiciary should the Federalists get their way in shaping the constitution of the nation.
In fact, the limitations of democracy should be all too apparent at this point to anyone who has purportedly lived in one. As David Runciman notes, “The history of democracy and crisis over the last hundred years shows repeated patterns of behavior: misapprehension, confusion, brinkmanship, experimentation, recovery” (293). Runciman in particular points out the problematic nature of democratic states in terms of overreacting to crises—and this can be seen today in the way the Western and the Eastern worlds have reacted to the coronavirus scare: Sweden appears to have been the only state to act with any sense of moderation or sense that its adults are fully capable of assessing their own risk tolerance levels and accepting the consequences of their actions. If they want to self-quarantine, so be it. If not, so be it. Americans on the other hand, have essentially followed the playbook of China—a notoriously un-democratic state—in lockdown states even where few COVID 19 cases have popped up. Runciman claims that this overreaction is a tendency of democracy—but, if both China and the US are acting in the same manner and with the same reaction to what by latest numbers will likely be little more than a severe flu year in terms of mortality rate, one must argue that the response is not born out of democracy but rather out of shrill authoritarianism. True, each state’s governor has had the power to declare a state of emergency and issue lockdown orders—but when so many governors act in lockstep and so many states depend upon federal government largesse one can certainly make the claim that these governors are not acting on behalf of the will of the people but rather on behalf of the central bank, organs of state and big businesses that all benefit in some way from a reshuffling of the economy. In other words, Runciman puts the blame for overreaction on democracy. It should instead be labeled a characteristic of unbridled authoritarianism ala the sort described in detail by George Orwell in Animal Farm. Today’s politicians bear much resemblance to his pigs. There is little of ancient Athenian civic-mindedness among today’s citizens.
Instead, we have a command economy, whose terms are now dictated by the Federal Reserve, itself now overseen by a private institution named Blackrock, which controls some $7 trillion in assets. Does one not see a conflict of interest in this alliance? One should—and one should not dare call it a democracy which allows such an alliance to form in the midst of a faux-crisis like the one presently being promoted endlessly across all media day and night. Both Dahl and Mansbridge know the score and Mansbridge spells it out plainly: “Political victories for corporate capital create greater inequalities in resources, which in turn lead to further political victories. The effects of these trends have extended far beyond what Dahl imagined when he warned against the first impediment to democracy in the United States, the ‘country’s commitment to only a modest interference by government in the conduct of corporate capitalism’” (Mansbridge 2). The reality is that America is a business—not a community—and that point has been made by numerous people—from President Calvin Coolidge to screenwriter Paddy Chayesky to filmmaker Andrew Dominik. The nation is governed by immutable bylaws of business—not by the popular will of the people. Their voice and power is severely limited by the system that was wrought by the Federalists more than 200 years ago. The American War for Independence was fought to overthrow a Crown, and the first thing that the special interests (i.e., the business interests) did in America was to create a system of government in which they could effectively serve as the Crown—but an unseen Crown—a Crown that existed behind the scenes, behind a system of so-called checks and balances, ultimately ruled of course by the Judiciary as Jefferson argued, and the Judiciary influenced in the end by that same unseen Crown. It is a system of principals and agents—a system of business masquerading as a democracy, founded upon Enlightenment Era philosophical principles that served more as dressing than as foundation—which is why slavery was allowed to persist in spite of the words “all men created equal” being written into the Declaration, inspired by the original “Rights of Man” proponent himself, Thomas Paine (who ironically would die friendless and unmourned in America). Democracy was simply a tune, lip service paid to the gullible who gobbled it up while the principals and agents colluded behind the scenes to engineer and construct a system that would benefit them. There is no other explanation for why today there is the 1% and the 99% and the enormous divide between the two. It was meant to be that way, and it shall remain that way.
Democracy cannot overcome this challenge because democracy itself was and is a canard. Were the principals and agents of power in America really going to hand over their opportunity for supremacy in a new land to a bunch of illiterate hicks in states from Carolina to New Hampshire? Unlikely. Democracy was sold to them the way coronavirus defeating toothpaste is sold to listeners of the Alex Jones show. There is no real democracy in the US. Again, Paddy Chayevsky pointed this out nearly half a century ago. The film he wrote won numerous Academy Awards, but one will not come across it in many history or government surveys. It is too pointed, too on target, and too discomforting for Americans who prefer to think that their vote matters, that their Party represents them, that they are not being played like a fiddle by the principals and agents of power—i.e., the 1%. When that much wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, it is absolutely foolish and naïve to believe that there is any such thing as democracy functioning in the world.
Ferejohn understands this point well enough when he states that “those at the top tend to get most of their income from investments rather than wages and salaries, and such sources tend to be highly volatile and sensitive to how the economy is doing” (35). Those at the top do benefit from their investments and transactions (again, Chayevsky pointed this out in his classic “Arthur Jensen” speech), and what Ferejohn says here is worth considering in light to the recent bailout of corporate America under the pretense of saving companies hit hard by the coronavirus. Why did Boeing need or deserve a bailout for instance? The company had spent billions over the course of the past ten years buying back its own stock so as to benefit shareholders while cheaping out on its own R&D and product development, leading to the crashing of two of its 737-Max planes and the killing of hundreds. The way today’s centralized planners react to loss of life, one would think they would have immediately grounded all planes everywhere in the world until they figured out exactly why those planes crashed—but they did not. They only halt the economy to a standstill when it benefits the principals and their agents—companies like Boeing and Blackrock.
After all, those are the nations of the world today. There is no America. There is only Boeing, Exxon, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Apple and a handful of others. They are the nations of the world today. On the 4th of July, everyone should do his civic duty and purchase shares in Apple or Alphabet. Milton Friedman said it best though he understated it to an order of magnitude: “Economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society” (8). These arrangements are not determined by the average yokel who votes maybe once every six or seven years. These arrangements are made by the principals and agents of business. “Free society” is essentially something of a canard as well, but all things relative one could argue that Americans are freer than, say, Chinese. But in short order, one will find it hard to distinguish between the two societies, especially if people like Bill Gates get their way and digi-tracking of all people becomes the new means of monitoring one’s “social credit” score.
In conclusion, democracy in America was dead on arrival. Tocqueville saw a world that was significantly different from the world today—but even he noticed that America was a strange hybrid of forces and ideals that defied imagination and that would undoubtedly change and lead to a number of problematic outcomes in the near future. There are those who believe in democracy—in the ideal—and they are enthused and inspired by the steps the Founding Fathers took to create this nation. However, there are also those who take a skeptical stance and see the Founding Fathers as barons of industry, couching their land and power grabs in terms that speak to equity and fairness yet in reality do little to effect any real distribution of power.
Works Cited
Dahl, Robert. On Democracy.
Ferejohn, John. Is Inequality a Threat to Democracy?
Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. University of Chicago Press.
Mansbridge, Jane. On the Importance of Getting Things Done. PS, 2012.
Runciman, David. The Confidence Trap. Princeton University Press.