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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (137850)	6/24/2004 5:26:42 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I don't think of what we have as a democracy. The "people" in this country have very little real power, nor, I think, could they get much power if they wanted it, short of a revolution. What we have in the US is an oligarchy- run primarily by the wealthy and for the wealthy. Of course the people in power keep in power by "safeguarding" those socialist programs that lull the electorate into a sense of well-being, but the real power is shared between people in positions of authority in government, wealthy individuals (who overlap significantly with people in government- due to the incestuous relationship between money and access to political power) and the individuals who run large corporations. I agree with you that the courts are the best avenue of access to power for a citizen in this country- but even the courts are manipulated by money and power. If we lived in a smaller, more manageably governed country the corruption would probably be less extreme- but America is too large, and too fragmented a society, to be governed in any way approaching "democracy," imo, of course.