Western Democracy

Something's rotten in the state of Democracy. Don't get me wrong, I love it compared to the alternatives (e.g. theocracy, dictatorship, none.) But its ideals are so lofty that in our current state we cannot compare to them. The word itself comes from demos and kratos, or "people" and "power," and in its ideal state would mean that power is shared by every member of a state. Seeing as how a government made of say, 30 million people, wouldn't exactly run, we have to settle for alternatives. We could go the ancient way and exclude women, non-whites, and people under 30, but that's not exactly the sort of government we want.

So we had to sacrifice power and settle for representation. All still well and good- we can't directly influence the government, but we can vote, right? Well yeah, except that the candidates all seem to suck. In America's last presidential election, there were two candidates (yay for the two-party state.) One was a complete fuck-up right-wing nut job while John Kerry came off as incompetent and indecisive. With choices like these, how can I be unhappy?

As a whole, we tend to glorify the past relative to the present. Looking back through history, we have George Washington, Abe Lincoln, FDR. Now we have George Walker Bush, the C+ Yale Graduate with the oratory skills of a 3rd grader. And we have the global threats of terrorists, bird flu, Global Warming, and whatever scare is currently in vogue (not that Global Warming isn't very real or very scary.) Thankfully our cities aren't being bombed and we're not reduced to eating rats, so our present is a little rosier than that of World War II.

But great challenges face us, and one of those is the government we'd like to see solving those problems. The government currently suffers from the parasite of corporations and from the high cost of running for office, ensuring that the seats of government are filled with rich (usually white and male) asses. For starters, restrictions on campaign contributions would limit the influence corporate fat cats have on politicians. This problem, at least, has a fairly obvious solution, even if it would be hard to put into effect. Making it so that competent leaders can run regardless of how much money they have is a problem with a less clear solution. However, it is plausible that with a more level playing field (i.e. one not stacked for those close to big business) a grassroots campaign might actually get someone elected to governor or senator or the like.