The USA is not a democracy; it never was. From the start, the elite arranged a coup whereby the articles of confederation were illegally replaced by our current undemocratic constitution. The guiding principle behind this new constitution was an expansion of the federal govt so that enlarged voting districts were created.
This was done by the elite so that the voters in the several states could not use their own gov’t against the rich. The idea was that enlarged voting districts would contain more factions. More factions meant fewer common shared interests among the voters of that district.
Fewer common shared interests meant that the voters were less able to elect and hold accountable their political representatives. The more important of these enlarged voting districts were the federal positions of president, senator and to a lesser degree, congressman.
The elite also set up a system of strong checks and balances, staggered elections and balances and separation of powers to make it harder for the gov’t to serve the will of the majority. For more on this, see Federalist Paper 10, written by James Madison, the so called father of the constitution who when he came into his inheritance, was worth about 100 million in today’s dollars.
Over the decades the USA became even larger, creating even more factions among the voters. This meant less voter unity and therefore less control by the voters over their own govt. And then mass immigration of nonwhites and racial integration created yet more factions among the electorate. This means that at this point, there is very little control of the federal govt, and, to a lesser degree, the state govts, by the voters.
Take a look at the rest of our cultural cousins–the rest of the western nations: britain, ireland, germany, france, sweden, norway, denmark, finland, switzerland, netherlands, belgium, australia, canada, new zealand, italy, etc.
If you look at recent history you can see that these nations have it set up where the voters have far more control of their govts that the Americans do. The principles of divide et impera are thus more clearly seen when you do this comparison: smaller is better for the majority because it causes fewer factions.
Homogeneous is better for the majority because it causes fewer factions. Small and homogeneous vs large and heterogeneous. This is one of the spectrums/measures of democracy.
The other spectrum/measure of democracy is democratic structure of the government: parliamentarianism vs federalism. Names mean nothing. How the gov’t is structured means everything. Parliamentarian forms of govt means that you put the real power of the government into the hands of politicians elected from small districts. Small districts have fewer factions than large districts. Very important, that. Read it again. Small districts means fewer factions among the voters and therefore MORE UNITY among the voters. More unity and more common interests shared.
In parliamentarian gov’ts the prime minister operates at the behest of the lower house. THe upper house is usually weak or powerless, unlike federalist govts like the USA. The executive office, i.e., the president or prime minister, almost voted in by the lower house, not the voter populace. And that prime minister can be thrown out by the lower house. The lower house controls everything, for all practical purposes. In almost every parliamentarian govt there is no judicial review like we have here in America where unelected life tenure judges get the final word on everything. Thus, in parliamentarian govts the people have the power because the power is held by the lower house, which representatives are elected from small voting districts where it takes less money to run and where the populace is smaller, more united, more homogeneous and therefore are better able to elect and hold accountable their representative.
Which nations have parliamentarian forms of govt? EVERY OTHER WESTERN NATION EXCEPT AMERICA. There are some few exceptions of a sort, but for practical purposes, the usa is the only western nation not to have a parliamentarian form of govt. And it shows.
However now that the elite have managed to slip in some recent nonwhite immigration into most of the other western nations, that has weakened voter unity and created more factions.
The way that the elite have managed to slip in more immigration has been the creation of a false-left, which replaced traditional economics-oriented leftism with race-and-gender-based leftism, replacing an economic focus with a social issues focus. This false-Left subculture started in academia in the USA. It is pushed onto young minds and converts them to false-Leftism. This false-Left was started by academic grants funded by the large nonprofit foundations such as the Ford, Getty, and Rockefeller foundations, which were started by plutocrats. These foundations gave grants to writers, academicians and activists, but favored those writers, academicians and activists who had a race-oriented perspective and who favored racial integration, mass immigration, minority and female rights and mass immigration. These grants were also given to those writers, academicians and activists who thought white people and in particular white males were bad, evil.
This all started almost 100 years ago. The falseLeft grants focused at first on elite colleges, e.g., harvard, yale, et al. That way they were able to mold impressionable young minds that went on to seats on the Supreme Court and other places of power.
Eventually over the decades, the effect of these grants was to build an academic subculture that put minorities and women on a pedestal and denigrated white males. This subculture favored the interests of the rich people who funded these grants because the eventual effect was the so called civil rights movement which increased factions, lowered voter unity and increased the supply of labor, driving down wages.
For more on this idea, see Dr Roelofs’ book FOUNDATIONS AND PUBLIC POLICY: THE MASK OF PLURALISM.
Back to the present-day USA:
So business and the rich can now do pretty much whatever they want. The USA is so large, so divided by heterogeneity, by diversity, by race, by size, that the only real check on govt power now is the media. And of course the media is owned by corporations. And the media is now so closely tied to the govt that I call it CorpGovMedia. Really it should be called CorpGovAcademiaHollywoodMedia because these powerful institutions are now so closely tied together that they operate as a single unit.
CorpGovAcademiaHollywoodMedia is governed by the false-leftism subculture created by the plutocrats via grants. Professional people who work in CorpGovAcademiaHollywoodMedia are governed by the false-left principles, unwritten code of conduct and mores instilled into them as impressionable youth in their high-ranked colleges.
This entire system was started by and for the rich.
It’s not a conspiracy; it’s an ecosystem.