What is the state of U.S. Democracy? Responding to President Bush’s criticism of the Russian political process, Vladimir Putin questioned how open the American process is with only two choices. Appearing for an interview on PBS’s NOW on October 7, Kurt Vonnegut posed the same question, asking how much diversity is there in politics if both of the 2004 presidential candidates were members of the secret society Skull & Bones at Yale? Following this line of thought, how come neither candidate was asked about this secretive group that both belonged to at the time of their entering manhood? Could it be the 30 plus pages of debate rules prevented the raising of the topic?
Al Gore recently announced the launch of Current TV, an interactive video production distributed over the Internet. Mr. Gore questions the state of our democracy when the essential exchange of ideas has become so limited first by the one-way distribution of radio and then television, further exacerbated today by media consolidation. Furthermore, Paul Bigioni provides a thoughtful comparison of the American political and economic system to that of the Nazi regime in the Real Threat of Fascism. No we are not suggesting that the U.S. will ultimately engage in genocide, but the other similarities are disturbing. Consider this insight from Bigioni,
“Before the rise of fascism, Germany and Italy were liberal democracies. Fascism did not swoop down on these nations as if from another planet. To the contrary, fascist dictatorship was the end result of political and economic processes which these nations underwent while they were still democratic. In both these countries, economic power became so utterly concentrated that the bulk of all economic activity fell under the control of a handful of men. Economic power, when sufficiently vast, becomes by its very nature political power. The political power of big business supported fascism in Italy and Germany.”