It’s the System, Man, and it’s Broken Beyond Repair
Only a revolution in political affairs has enough horsepower to shatter the current equilibrium, reverse the vicious cycles, and enable us to address our complex problems in time to prevent apocalypse
Representative Democracy (RD) as practiced in America is a noble but failed experiment. The hypothesis: that Americans, having learned the lessons of Greece, Rome and Europe and having come together “in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” could best achieve those ends through Representative Democracy, had been definitively disproved by the time of the Civil War.
However, as the hypothesis was not generated through the scientific process but was promulgated as a tenet of the political theology of neoliberalism, it has not received rigorous scrutiny. It has been historically evaluated as either “proven” or unchallengeable. Interestingly, its biggest challenge has come recently and from the right, which uses it variously as a cudgel to politically intimidate the left and as a punching bag to blame for our inability to solve our increasingly complex national challenges.
While MAGA has put the final nail in the coffin of RD, and ironically exposed its own nefarious aims in so doing, the left bears just as much responsibility as the right for failing to acknowledge the disproved hypothesis, and even more responsibility for failing to advance viable alternatives. The left elite benefits every bit as much as the right from the current political dynamic – and is heavily invested in covering up the systemic failure and exploiting the situation.
For one example, “Dan Kovalik, a human rights activist and lawyer, posted a video of an encounter he had with Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) that ended in his being ejected from the event he was attending.
Kovalik, who said he paid for a ticket to attend this Fetterman event, confronted the senator about his “failure to support a ceasefire in Gaza.” He can be heard asking Fetterman why he doesn’t support a “humanitarian ceasefire” as a staffer approached and offered to hear Kovalik speak. But Kovalik insisted on talking to Fetterman directly, saying, “You’re a good guy. I voted for you. I know you’re a nice guy.”
At that point, the staffer told Kovalik that he needed to leave. When Kovalik attempted to hand Fetterman a document, he was physically forced out of the event,” Jamie Frevele, “Mediaite.”
Fetterman is supposed to work for “the people,” particularly his constituents. That's the contract outlined in the Constitution – elected officials “represent” and work for us -- and we pay them to do so. So, when a liberal Democratic Senator threw out his own constituent Dan Kovalik for asking questions – which is one of the primary methods we use to evaluate whether we are being faithfully represented – we see that the power equation has been completely inverted and that the left elite is as entitled as the right. This is not an anomaly – the authors are close to two Members of Congress who have unfortunately “joined the system.”
Most members of congress don't respond to 'the people' until forced. Phone calls and letters might make you feel a bit better about yourself, but unless you have a powerful lobby behind you, what you think and feel about what's happening in this country have minimal impact on how legislators make decisions.
Here’s what the now famous ‘Gilens and Page’ study (“Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” 18 September 2014) concluded: “Basically, average citizens only get what they want if economic elites or interest groups also want it. The authors conclude, basically, that the US is a corrupt oligarchy where ordinary voters barely matter. Or as they put it, "economic elites and organized interest groups play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the general public has little or no independent influence."
Interestingly, both the left and right rank and file feel this in their gut even if they couldn’t articulate it on a bet. This deep knowing that something is wrong, that little can be done about it within the system, and that the problem is being covered up, creates a cognitive dissonance in the populace that manifests as systemic disaffection on the right, cynicism on the left, and social and health pathology for all. This dynamic is known in systems science as a vicious cycle, and such are becoming more and more common as our problems become increasingly more complex and our problem-solving systems simultaneously more sclerotic and ineffective.
Lack of meaningful access to our elected representative is only the most overt and obvious indicator of system failure. It is emblematic though because it is the very purpose-designed mediation mode between constituents and their representatives that has doomed it. Elected officials have become brokers who -- like all brokers -- use their information and access advantages to maneuver outcomes to their advantage while obscuring the fact that they are routinely doing so.
Here are some of the dynamics stemming from our failed RD system that have just as much or more negative impact on Americans’ lives:
Even the supposed “good news” is usually boosterism for neoliberalism rather than a measure of anything meaningful. Just this week Peter Diamandis – the Abundance Guru, is touting technology’s role in reducing extreme global poverty. It is indeed positive that such poverty has been halved in the past twenty years, as he points out, and it is true that technology has played a role. And it is a shame that, as Diamandis also notes, most Americans don’t believe this information because of their conditioning and ignorance. Diamandis is incensed that Americans routinely disdain such evidence of abundance and considers them deliberately obtuse. So far, so good.
But where he goes wrong is attribution for these results. It’s the artful combination of technology deployed in support of better policy, technology making the amount of wealth available for distribution scale, innovative mechanisms such as micro-lending, technology that amplifies the generosity of western governments and people, the ingenious non-canonical application of technology and the sheer human determination of the less well-off that together comprise the systemic reason for reduced poverty. All those factors had to be in place to reduce poverty and, frankly, technology is much less important than the human factors.
But the reason people don’t believe things have gotten better relative to poverty is that their own experiences with accelerating wealth inequality – and the resultant feelings of inadequacy on the part of the majority -- overwhelm their ability to reason about it effectively. As the French economist Thomas Piketty (“The Economics of Inequality”) and others have pointed out, it is one’s status relative to others that matters most to individuals, not aggregate global wealth.
Most importantly, we should not be attempting to “design out” this aspect of human reasoning, because the nations and societies that pay the most attention to inequality and act prudently to reduce it that have the highest quality of life and the highest levels of happiness. This human predilection to measure relative status is thus a feature of the human condition as opposed to a bug, and to render it explicit in political decision-making is inherently healthy for individuals and their societies. One could argue that the failure to acknowledge, must less address, class in the United States is a major reason we embrace neoliberalism – which claims to transcend class.
Such interpretations of progress are foisted upon us, with the net effect of reinforcing the elite’s worldview that our political theology is manifestly correct and being rewarded by God for its righteousness. We see this daily with the Stock Market, GDP, and employment statistics, and these reinforcing mechanisms are the reason American billionaires are so shameless and brazen in their desire for ever-increasing wealth, power, and control.
What is really perverted is that the right elites exploit every aspect of this dynamic, and we permit them to do so. They tout “findings” such as Diamandis,’ as well as GDP and employment figures, as proof that the system is working as designed, while at the same time they fan the grievances of their base’s lack of wealth and/or upward mobility as economic externalities caused by the left’s tinkering with capitalism.
Diamandis is a highly learned and intelligent engineer, but his lack of systemic thinking and rigorous analysis regarding sociopolitical issues means that he frequently does more harm than good by being an unwitting Apostle for the Gospel of Prosperity.
This is all happens because cultures and political theologies tend to blind all but the most knowledgeable and self-aware people to the downsides of the system into which they are subsumed. Everybody now realizes the absurdity of the theory that the sun revolved around the earth and that the earth is flat, but most of us believe equally idiotic things now and defend them without hesitation.
For instance, one of these is that we must have RD instead of Participative Democracy because we couldn’t otherwise get a consensus, and we’d have gridlock. Congress anybody? As we outlined in this recent newsletter, this is a false belief that even most ardent progressives support. Recently I’ve had two friends dismiss my arguments for PD outright for just this reason.
Another canard is that Democracies don’t stand up as well to external threats as authoritarian nations. We offer World Wars I and II, the Space Race and the Cold War to indicate the bankruptcy of this fallacy.
The fallacy that bugs me most personally is that we shouldn’t pursue better government and society because that is utopianism and as well all know that only ends in Marxism, Communism, and Totalitarianism -- so we’re better off putting up with what we have. Where does this one even come from? Marx didn’t advocate for utopia, Communism is just another political theology its practitioners use to advance their own power, and Totalitarianism is the result of good people giving up, as Hannah Arendt (“The Origins of Totalitarianism”) pointed out. Utopianism hasn’t failed – it’s never even been half-heartedly pursued.
Finally, we note the historically disproven lie that Republicans are better for the economy and crime. The evidence is totally to the contrary on both areas.
If Representative Democracy was the best we could achieve and it’s failing, where we do turn? The answer is Participative Democracy (PD), as we’ve noted at length in previous newsletters. Of course, PD will become its own political theology once emplaced, and therefore subject to obsolescence. However, there is reason to believe that a system that empowers people and enables continuous improvement has a much better chance of improving and preserving life on earth than systems of mediated power because it will be much less vulnerable to corruption.
Look, none of us ever voted for neoliberalism or political parties. And neither was sanctioned by the Founders or enshrined in the Constitution. Yet together they wield more power and influence than the Constitution, legal precedent, and the desires of the people put together. In fact, both right and left are defending them to the death. This defense and unwillingness to forego certain disaster for possible improvement is insane – and is precisely why we advocate for revolution instead of simply tweaking the current system.
Only a revolution in political affairs has enough horsepower to shatter the current equilibrium, reverse the vicious cycles, and enable us to address our complex problems in time to prevent man-made apocalypse. Before you flinch at the word ‘revolution,’ what we mean by the term is not a violent overthrowing of the government, but a proactive self-disruption of the political system to re-emplace “the people” at the center of politics and governance by systemically dis-empowering the financiers and mediators.
At any rate, the efforts to preserve our current form of government are misguided and, except for efforts to protect and encourage voting, counterproductive. We require a new mass movement that generates a revolution that explicitly rejects and overthrows neoliberalism as political theology and its attendant socio-political systems, and we must do so as rapidly as superior theory and practice can be emplaced.
Reader note: We deliberately focus on one issue at a time in most of our newsletters. But our analysis is comprehensive and systemic, and if you are not a habitual Revelatur Newsletter reader, you may find it useful to read some of our previous pieces on Substack to see how we think all the pieces fit together.
Help the Cause: We offer free subscriptions because we want to impact the broadest possible audience. Please ask your family, friends, and colleagues to subscribe. Thanks, Corey and Mark Hill.