The Millennial Democracy

In the recent 2022 midterm elections, political contributions from billionaires topped the previous all-time highs reached during the 2018 midterms, clocking in at over $881 million. Looking at the graph of billionaire contributions since the Citizen's United  Supreme Court decision in 2010, each election cycle looks like a stair step to the next, with each seeing notable increases over the previous election cycle. With the majority of American media owned by billionaires or groups of them, politics increasingly becoming inundated with their money, and industry-dominating companies owned by the wealthy often seeing record profits while the American people struggle with inflation and supply-chain disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the thoughts, opinions and will of the billionaire class in this country surrounds and permeates our public discourse as never before. If the United States wants any chance of creating and maintaining a more equal and fair democracy and economy, the...

The American Constitution; by extension the structure of our government and much of our economic and social policy, is broken and deeply flawed. The grand experiment that is the United States of America has never been perfect, it has always been imperfect to one degree or another, and it will likely always have its flaws. That said, America's story is one of constantly trying to be better, to become more free and inclusive, of being more fair and just, of acknowledging the faults in our past and striving to correct them in our future. America is a beautiful mess, and we find ourselves at another inflection point in the history of our nation, one which will determine the direction we travel in for the next several generations to come. Since 1789, when the Constitution of the US took effect, it's been amended twenty-seven times. At the time of its ratification, the now nearly-sacred document denied women, ethnic minorities and even a large swath of adult white males the ability ...

At the core of every modern democratic republic rests the idea that the government of any nation exists for the protection and preservation of its people and their interests. More to the point, government exists as an extension of our collective will. The citizens of America do not exist to serve a monarch as loyal subjects, for example, nor are we content to live under the whims of an authoritarian dictator. Instead, the US government and its authority is derived from the collective consent of the governed, the American People. While this idea remains a powerful concept and a goal we should continue to strive towards, the reality of the modern United States does not fully match this high-minded rhetoric. Much of the reason for the current disconnect between Americans and their government is due to the prevailing and growing influence of so-called 'big money' on our political system. Until we reverse the disturbing trend of the wealthy and connected funding the majority of our ...