I don't know if we are moving toward fascism but the system of government we currently have in the United States is not Democracy.

"Money is the life blood of politics" Dr. Edet Ituen said this in my first year of Political Science as his student. He may not have been the first but I attribute the quote to him since I actually heard him say it. What we currently consider to be a representative democracy is in all truth nothing of the sort. For our system of government to be a representative democracy we would first have to have people in office who actually represent us. How can someone that makes six figures or more a year represent someone that makes 10,000 or less a year. The answer is he can not. The person that makes that much more money has completely different concerns than the person who makes so little money.

For a system of government to be considered a representative democracy we would have to divorce the influence of money from the equation so that the representative could actually focus on representing the people instead of worrying about where he is going to get enough money to run for office in the next election and what issues he will have to vote for in order to get it.

So if we do not have a representative democracy in the United States, you must surely be wondering what system of government do we have in the United States. The answer is simple we have a Plutocracy. Plutocracy is the rule of money. Those who have money make the rules those who do not, have to live by the rules. In a Plutocracy, we see influence being controlled behind the scenes by those that can afford to influence. In a Plutocracy, only the wealthy have a vote. Now you may say I vote every election year for president. This may be true but it is not your votes that elects the president. It is the Electoral College. Why do we use the Electoral College? Because when the US was founded the rich(educated) did not trust the poor(uneducated) to vote in a manor that would elect the best person. There is at least one case where the President was not voted to be president by the popular vote but instead the Electoral College disagreed with the popular vote and elected the less popular candidate.

Is it possible to go from Plutocracy to fascism? Yes it is. Will this happen in the US? Only time will tell but then it will be too late if it does.

Learn more about this author, Shawn Vilmaire.
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