DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, THE DEATH OF

In 1835, or as Father Abraham would say, seven score years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville penned his seminal work, Democracy in America, detailing our nascent nation’s new system of government.

A lot has changed since 1835, and while I’m unfit to comment on the state of democracy then, today it is in serious trouble. Oligarchical forces threaten the power of the people. In fact, if you take a Princeton study from last April at its word, the United States is already an oligarchy, and while that might seem a bit extreme to some, there’s no denying the outsized impact of money on our political system.

If Alexis de Tocqueville wandered into 2015 America, one might wonder what he would say about democracy today. I speculate that his new book might be called “Oligarchy in America,” as the moneyed interests that have corrupted our political process continue to strengthen their grip on our elected officials.

The phenomenon is not new. As much as the insanity of legally equating people and corporations bothers me, money has been a factor in politics as long as there has been either. As a glimmer of hope and a tangent, I point out that the same sacrosanct body that equated people and companies also once convinced itself that Dred Scott was property and that separate was cool as long as it was equal. So the good news is the court has a history of making bad decisions that were later rectified. Let’s hope this is one of them.

Meanwhile the advance of technology and recent court decisions have made the current reach of money into politics even more pernicious. Americans have had to suffer both the deluge of false and negative advertising that infinite money allows, and even worse, the implementation of policies that many of us, even most of us, do not support. The insidious effect of unlimited money on our political process has tangible consequences that imperil our freedom.

In practice, money is actually being used to buy time, not speech. Unlimited money buys air time, tv spots, those annoying Facebook ads, repetition. It does not produce speech. Time is not a constitutionally protected right, and I suppose the money is fungible, and one could technically argue that massive donations create the ads, and small donations buy the TV time, but who are we kidding? Attack ads are cheap; prime time television ad space is not.

One effect of money on politics has been to make it a 24/7 spectacle with its own attached private-sector political industry. I write this in June 2015, and we’ve been hearing about the 2016 elections for how long now? And people think the Christmas season begins too early…This political industry has mastered the use of data. They know exactly what kinds of ads to build, where to put them, which viewers to target, and how often. A private sector that feeds itself on legal political donations and exists to create software and campaign ads to identify voters and to harness data to win an election. That is what massive sums of money buys: not speech, but a corporate marketing campaign, a strategy, a game-plan designed to seduce us. Free speech in the 21st century? Its defenders say so. But if politics is the manifestation of the public will, this is its literal privitization.

But more importantly than the theoretical point that speech is a thin veil for the vast sums of money corrupting politics is the real world implications of money’s effect. We often talk about how not having money affects people, but we have a wonderful example of what money does do to people right under the microscope of the 24/7 political entertainment industry.

There is the aforementioned Princeton Study, a damning enough piece of evidence, but there is more. Have you heard about Hillary Clinton’s upcoming$2700 a plate fundraiser in New Hampshire? It must feel pretty bad to pay $2700 just to know you have no influence at all when compared to the guy who paid $5million or the corporation that paid $10million. I’ve only got $350 to give this campaign cycle, so next time Hillary Clinton is doing an ice cream social in the park, maybe I can afford a scoop; I bet I could even get a milkshake at a Bernie Sanders ice cream social.

And don’t forget that it was a collection of rich donors who accidentally coaxed Mitt Romney into revealing his true character during the last election. Can you really believe 47% of the country think they’re entitled to food? Imagine the audacity of thinking you have the right to eat. This small group of people in a room convincing themselves that half of us are lazy has more influence than the 47% of people they’re dismissing!

The evidence shows us where the loyalties of our politicians rest, and the data show us who has the money to command that loyalty. This free speech, if you can somehow convince yourself it is that, is not good for our democracy. If democracy is truly government for the people, by the people, then we have truly been duped into legalizing corruption and therefore the consolidation of power into the hands of a few.

That, of course, is what political power has always been, legalized corruption of some form that supports the few at the expense of the many. Every manifestation of power in history has been this, until democracy. Power of the people, a government beholden to us. A Republic, if you can keep it, warned good old Ben Franklin. But we are no longer keeping it. Air time is expensive, time is money, and those who have the money have the keys to a whole industry designed to detect the whims of we the people, craft ads to play to our fears no matter what truths must be stretched, buy time during your favorite shows and space on your favorite sites. It’s speech, and it’s not free, it’s actually very expensive. The industry that has spawned around elections is simply Big Brother as a private sector enterprise. An enterprise funded by “free speech.” The only difference in our increasingly Orwellian political dystopia is that Big Brother is using money and information to win elections, not govern.

As for governing, well, we’ve made elections expensive. There are donors to be repaid. Democracy was supposed to be different, but no, we’re consolidating power in the hands of the wealthy few by giving them undue influence in the political process, and their electoral arms race is dumbing down the public discourse and polarizing our goverment. Not all of those wealthy few are bad people; many, most of them are not bad people (I’m sure there are a few…), but it doesn’t matter if you like the Koch brothers or Tom Steyer, Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton, the former individuals exercise the power of money over the latter, and that is not good for the vast majority of us, except on those instances when our priorities and theirs line up. It shouldn’t matter which side of the political spectrum you find yourself on, if you have any distaste at all for the potential future president, it’s a safe bet you’re not going to be too pleased by how their power broker, their king maker, their funder wants them to govern.

And so now I leave you with a bit of hope, which is that most Americans feel the same way. For all its flaws, our government is still beholden to us, and if we choose to, we can demand something better. We the people understand that fostering an oligarchy threatens true democracy. We the people understand that even when they are people we support it is not in the interest of our government to cement the power of individuals with money.

The Death of Democracy in America is a premature title, but it’s also not an irrational fear. In fact, among his many predictions, de Tocqueville warned “friends of democracy” about the return of a “manufacturing aristocracy.”

A republic if we can keep it. We can. We see the problem, but we must act to fix it. We must demand a system in which speech is truly free, in which our voices are equitable.

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