DEMOCRACY I grow weary of all the talk about democracy. Apparently we're trying to spread our own form of government all over the world. As if the rest of the world even cares. I've got to be totally honest about this. I don't much like democracy. It puts too much of a burden on the common man. I think if most people were really honest about it they'd admit pretty much the same thing. They've basically got too many other things on their mind, like money and sex and professional sports, fashionable clothing, keeping up with celebrities and so on, to bother with how we're going to run the place. Let somebody else, some geek dude, handle that job. I don't think it's very effective either. It reminds me of the common areas of a neighborhood. You know, things like the devil's strip. In case you're not familiar with the term, it's the little piece of dirt between the sidewalk and the street. Technically, it's not a part of your property, in spite of the fact that you're expected to maintain it. Common areas of neighborhoods (and streets and highways) have one thing in common (pardon the pun): nobody owns them. Do you know why? Because everybody owns them. Therein lies a principle: if everybody owns it, then nobody does. Well, the same sort of thing may be said of democracy. If everybody has a voice (which seems to be the essence of what democracy is all about), then nobody does. Have you been paying attention to the presidential races of the past? Don't you find it amazing that the country always seems to be divided right down the middle? Virtually half the electorate prefers one candidate to the other. It's like everybody's vote is cancelling out everybody else's, which means (at least it seems to me) that we are being effectively disenfranchised. The effect of voting renders voting ineffective. And here's an interesting little tidbit. Did you know that the so-called founding fathers didn't give a hoot for democracy? There's no way they wanted the masses to determine the direction of the country. (It's been less than a hundred years since women got the vote.) Most of them preferred something along the lines of an aristocracy, government by the best (as opposed to the masses, who - I once heard - are the asses). I also prefer an aristocracy, which, in my opinion, is what we actually have. We only mouth the word democracy. The masses seem to like to hear it. It's like we're throwing them a bone. (Yeah, throw the doggie a bone.) When you take a hard look at it, it's pretty apparent that we don't really have a democracy. Not really. We have an aristocracy - of the wealthy. If you don't believe it, just do some investigating and see if you can locate a single poor person who's currently serving as a state or federal legislator. Do you honestly think that any member of the House of Representatives is poor? And the Senate? Forget about it. The system is designed to ensure that only the wealthy may obtain such positions. All the talk about democracy is a bunch of crap as far as I'm concerned. We've got nothing but an aristocracy of the wealthy and big business. And they have this game they love to play. It's called running for office. They dupe us into participating in the whole charade by offering us the "freedom" to vote. They stage these popularity contests amongst themselves and allow us po' folks to believe that we're actually doing something real important by deciding which rich person we want to "serve" us in the halls of government, a rich person who usually doesn't do anything they promise to do. It's all sham and pretense. Here's an idea. What if they had an election and nobody came?
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