Do we live in a republic or a democracy?
What kind of country do we live in?
One often hears or reads some strict conservative gleefully pointing out with a know-it-all winky wink the United States of America is a republic, not a democracy. Then you encounter progressive liberals speaking and writing frequently of the USA as a democracy. They rarely ever use the term republic. Both claim to speak for the US Constitution while lambasting the other’s interpretations. Some wryly and deliberately use the term capitalist republic, but such a label hasn’t caught on. Furthermore, one encounters so-called conspiracy theorists, people labeled as such by the mainstream mass media who ignore the fact our history is full of real, documented conspiracies from before the assassination of Julius Caesar to beyond the assassination of JFK, who warn and remind the rest of us corporate oligarchies of ultrawealthy elites, the plutocrats of the less than 1%, influence and control matters from behind the scenes. Not to mention the religious types who view us as under divine manipulation or torn between God and the Devil or between other Olde Gods. Or the UFO types who wonder or claim Alien agendas guided by NHIs or Non-Human Intelligences are at play. Others say our country is a nation-state composed of many countries, of many stateless-nations such as indigenous tribes. Yet others laugh at the notion we are a republic and point out we are an empire, a new kind of empire, an extraconstitutional empire of neofeudal transnational corporations and far-flung military bases and interdependent, neo-vassal allies.
We are, to some degree, all of those things. The United States is also uniquely American. We are a constitutional democratic republic. We are not a people’s republic, a communist republic, a socialist republic, a capitalist republic, a Christian nation, nor an Islamic republic. We are definitely not a people’s democratic republic.
We are a republic AND a democracy, and thus a true democratic republic. Not some fake communist people’s regime. The USA is constrained by its Federal constitution in such a way the Constitution is both context and content (along with Supreme Court decisions).
While we are constitutional democratic republic, the wild mix of capitalism, socialism, corporatism, populism, oligarchs, and corruption wield far-reaching influence upon the institutions of our nation. How much money one has and the knowledge to leverage one’s capital and wealth to accomplish political results and maintain influence behind the scenes is a force of power often pointed out and criticized but also something normalized and accepted. Another center of power and influence is what President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower once warned us all of as the military-industrial complex back in January 1961.
Such a nexus of power can be traced back to the mix of politicians from both parties and wealthy tycoons and bankers who gathered on Jekyll Island, Georgia, in November 2010 to lay the foundations of the Federal Reserve central banking System all the way to the expansion of military and intelligence institutions during the World Wars to the implementation of the National Security Act of 1947 during the early Cold War. Since Ike’s speech, these spreading, overlapping networks have evolved and grown into what can be described as the military/security-intelligence/surveillance-industrial/financial-education/prison complex.
These factors are far beyond the United States Constitution. They are far beyond the boundaries of both a republic and a democracy. The USA still has the legal framework as a constitutional republican democracy, and the corruption by monied interests for financial power combined with national security agendas is forcing a sort of mutation to occur. In a sense as these aberrations themselves become institutionalized, the original question if we are a republic or a democracy becomes moot, irrelevant, and historical.
William Dudley Bass
Monday 15 January 2024
Tuesday 30 January 2024
Shoreline/Seattle, WA
USA
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