The Illusion of Democracy

If we wanted to change the world, would voting for the next President/Prime Minister/Premier be the way to do it?

I don't think so and I'll tell you why.

All the parties and opposition parties may well have different rationalisations for their policies but the final chapter in the book of politics will be written by the winner, from a position of great power and great wealth, and its title will be 'How to keep the gravy train running without the populace finding out about it.'

It seems that whoever you place in power by exercising your 'democratic right' to vote, they all basically do the same thing.

Remove your finances and freedom, almost imperceptibly, one bit at a time.

It's easy to be cynical, I know, but politics (and not the sham that is the American Presidential Race) does interest me and—a bit like a room with a living person, a dead person and a smoking gun—it's difficult to look at the situation without forming an opinion of it.

While I'm sure that politicians do have a very difficult job, it seems to me that their time must be spent at least as much suppressing the opposition as tending to the health of their societies.

I think Douglas Adams hit a nail (one of many) on the head with his philosophers vs Deep Thought argument. Imagine Deep Thought as democracy to its 'practitioners' and I'll share a moment of this wonderful monologue with you:

"Everyone's going to have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually going to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market than you yourselves? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, you can keep yourself on the gravy train for life. How does that sound?"

This monologue could apply to a number of institutions. Here, Deep Thought was placating the philosophers, but he could have been speaking to a priest, an economist, a football manager or even a politician.

The illusion is that, no matter who we vote for, they will end up doing everything they can to sustain 'democracy' because it's keeping them rich and the rest of us ignorant.