Plutocracy Up-Date

Sad fucking truth that some know/admit, but most deny:

Trust is not in oversupply today. The United States has largely ceased to be a democratic republic (which is to say, a republic whose officers are validly elected by the demos, or commonality, of the community), but has become a plutocracy dominated by moneyed interests.

This is the result of (1) elimination by President Reagan of the existing Federal Communications Commission requirement for equal access to the public media by candidates for office (a system in which a Fox News, as presently constituted, would have no place); (2) the 1976 Supreme Court decision declaring money spent on political campaigns as a constitutionally protected form of free speech; and (3) more recent Supreme Court decisions banning restrictions on campaign funding and declaring business corporations “persons” with full constitutional rights to unlimited “free speech.” It is difficult to see how these changes and their consequences for American constitutional government can be reversed. The foreign implication is that the United States is no longer the political society it has, since World War II, been understood to be. This undermines the world’s trust in American democracy, and the American economy.

One could add the selection/appointment of G.W. Bush by the Supreme Court in 2000, but what real difference does it make? The party's over, & we know whose fault it is. Vengeance is all we can hope for at this point.