You know, the Democrats and Republicans aren’t a category. It’s not a sharp split. They’re two factions of the same party. We have a one party state with two somewhat different factions with a lot of overlap. What should you do in that case? Well like everything, it’s your own choice. Do you wanna live in a democratic society or do you wanna live in the society we have? Which remember, is not a democratic society and is not intended to be.

It’s what’s called in the technical literature: a polyarchy. A polyarchy is a system in which power resides in the hands of those who Madison called the wealth of the nation, the responsible class of men. And the rest of the population is fragmented, distracted, allowed to participate every couple of years, they’re allowed to come and say: “yes, thank you. Why don’t you continue for another 4 years?” And they have little choice among the responsible men, the wealth of the nation.
That’s the way the country was founded. It was founded on the principle explained by Madison in the Constitutional Convention that the primary goal of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.
But that remains. It remains the elite ideal…and it’s a constant struggle.

And most of the population is well aware of it. So for example take the November 2000 election. Nobody could understand why the public didn’t care. The public is a game among intellectuals. The public “just didn’t care.” So OK, the election was stolen, who cares? Why wasn’t it an issue? Attitudes in the United States are very carefully monitored. Business wants to know what people are thinking. In fact, most people voted against their own interests and consciously because they knew it didn’t matter much. They were supposed to vote on what are called qualities. Not issues.

Like…do you like the guy? You know…do you wanna be with him or something like that. Do you want to have a drink with him in a bar or something like that. That was the issue in the election. And people didn’t even know where the candidate stood on issues. And it’s not because they’re stupid. It was extremely hard to figure out where they stood on issues and that they’re trained to make it hard.

And in fact, most of the issues that the public cared about weren’t even allowed to come up. The major issues had to do with economic affairs. What’s misleadingly called globalization, the trade deficit, job security and things like that. You can’t bring those issues up in the elections. If you take a look at attitudes, there’s a very sharp split between elite opinion, which is strongly in favor of all of this stuff and public, which is strongly opposed to them. And therefor it can’t come up in the elections.

So, what do you do?

Well, you have to decide whether you want to live in a democratic society or not. If you want to live in the kind of society that say, Madison envisioned…ok that’s a choice, but certainly not necessary. Over the last couple hundred years there has been a very substantial extension of the right of the population to have the ability to participate and make a difference. It’s not overwhelming and it’s always a struggle to beat it back but it’s no reason why that can’t continue. And that’s the alternative. It’s not a matter of naming one party or another but just changing the whole framework in which politics persists, largely because of the extremely narrow concentration of economic power, which removes from the public arena most decisions that belong there. There’s a major effort underway right now to reduce it even further, but you don’t have to accept this.