So Now What?
In the face of all this – what good is there to mention the doings and non-doings of Congress if it seems to be alternately actively or passively, intentionally or unintentionally, facilitating the “men with the plan” of a unitary executive?
For precisely the same reason I listed in The Silent Coup as making it so dangerous to expand the power of the Presidency and the Executive Branch, by decreasing the checks and balances on it by the Legislative Branch: “The Congress is the branch most sensitive and receptive to the will of the people. Unlike the Executive Branch, elections are held continuously rather than every fourth year, putting pressure on Senators and Representatives not to stray to far away from their constituency and use their constitutional responsibility to guard against abuses of power.”
While the Presidential elections receive far more attention and “bells and whistles,” the U.S. people would do better not to buy into this cheap trick of “shock and awe” if they want to use the political venue to decide how power and other resources are distributed and used in their society.
Senators and Representatives are far more easily influenced by pressure from and/or problems put forth by, local and state-based movements and people who lack the money and connections to make any significant impression in the halls of the President and his entourage.
I do not say that our representatives in Congress come cheap.
With some exceptions, they seem to be either forced by the “rules of the political game”, or all too willing to become “luxury prostitutes” not selling their votes and voices in Congress for anything less than amounts and reciprocal favors on a level no one can offer and still be representative of the general public (the truth is that the wealth and power of U.S. is not the wealth and power of the American people. The majority of Americans are no more powerful and wealthy than most other developed nations, in some cases, less so).
Nevertheless, they are closer to us – both in terms of where they grew up and live as well as shared social experiences.
I know that should I ever climb up the power ladder of politics, I would always be biased – whether I wanted to or not - towards people, places and things that affected me positively. Moreover, few things affect one so much as the places, faces, features and values of the place where one grew up and called home.
Only if you are aware of what is going on in the Senate and House of Representatives, can you take appropriate action along with others in your district or state to put pressure on incumbent and aspiring Senators and Representatives.
In the face of the horrible statistics of voting turn out in U.S., it is hard not to conclude that democracy in the U.S. is little more than the name of a particular process of electing a government.
One of the great works claimed as a testimony to the success of the - at the time – unique and revolutionary political system of democracy set up in the USA, was the book Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.
It has been called the most influential study of the United States ever written.
Tocqueville visited USA 1831-1832 and from what he has experienced he wrote about how “liberty could be channeled by widespread participation in public life to prevent a potentially volatile tyranny of the majority from spilling over into anarchy or despotism”.
By this he was referring to the system of combining the virtues, and balancing the vices, of what the Founding Fathers saw as the three ideal forms of government:
The power of the many (i.e democracy, through the House of Representative which represented the will of the people)
The power of the few and – at least as was intended – for the purpose specially skilled (i.e aristocracy through the Senate which through education and cultivation would be less susceptible to the whims of a large and diverse population, expected to be too focused on their individual needs to take into account the greater context)
The power of the one (i.e monarchy through the President, providing the ability of fast and decisive action).
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