What are your true feelings about supporting the Democratic Party of today?

[Ichingcarpenter]

51. Five centuries ago

Five centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli explained how to undertake a revolution from above without most people even noticing. In his Discourses on Livy, he wrote that one “must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones.”


That is, keep the old government structures, even while you make profound changes to the actual system, because the appearances are all that most people will notice.


So today, instead of seeing the corpse of a republic in which we live, we see merely the dead man’s clothing. Those clothes look the same as ever, albeit increasingly worn. We have had a quiet revolution that has not eliminated our Congressional representatives – it’s simply made them largely irrelevant.

As Machiavelli saw in his own time (and as he essentially foretold regarding our own), the dramatic changes to our political institutions have occurred without the people really noticing.

Consider the internationalization of real power in this world, and the lack of institutional means to examine or regulate such power. Our global situation is akin to medieval feudalism, or more simply gangsterism.

The military power of the United States is the primary tool for enforcement and self-enrichment by those with means. Best of all, you don’t have to be an American citizen to influence policies of the U.S. military.

Just ask any influential Saudi Arabian, Israeli, or Chinese leader. Or various leaders from the world of organized crime.

Consider the ramming through of the Patriot Act a bare month after 9/11/01, and then reaffirmed again when it was obvious that not a single member of Congress read it thoroughly.

With such a massively expanded federal ability to spy into your personal life, you might as well bid farewell to the Fourth Amendment – at least if you’re doing anything interesting in the opinion of certain and mysterious bureaucrats.


Consider the conviction held by America’s Founding Fathers that a functioning democracy requires an informed citizenry. Otherwise, they argued, the experiment in “government by the people” would be doomed to failure, and would inevitably transform into oligarchy. Compare that to our situation today, when ordinary people cannot gain important information from governing bodies, when the Freedom of Information Act is increasingly unfriendly, and when people are pacified 24/7 by a non-stop all-encompassing entertainment-driven culture that dominates one’s waking moments.

The Romans called that bread and circuses. It describes our situation well enough today.
In the same vein, consider also the promulgation of lies by America’s political leadership that served as the pretext for the current war (e.g. the false link between Iraq and Al Quaida, the falseness of claims regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction), and the willingness of America’s so-called Watchdog Media to jump uncritically on board, beating the war drum. And when recognition is made that the information was indeed false, it comes too late to prevent the pointless deaths of thousands of soldiers and civilians.


Consider the horrified reaction to the savagery of Nazi and Japanese atrocities during the Second World War. To the infamous German defense — “we were only following orders” — the world responded (rightly) that there are certain human values that must never be transgressed, and that torture is never an acceptable human value. Fast forward to the atrocities committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. And the defense offered by (what some like to refer to as) America’s finest: that they did no wrong, since they were only following orders. Just ask American soldier, Lyndie England. That’s what she told the world

The fallout from the deep recession and the banking crisis proved the institutions we thought were sound are but an illusion.


Machiavelli certainly had it right, but an addendum is necessary. After the true and deep structures of power have been sufficiently transformed, the outward appearance must eventually catch up.

As the old song says, something’s gotta give, and the outward trappings will need to be revised to reflect the new order.

So I'm not gonna vote on your poll on this thread.