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...

Prior to the presidential election of 2016, a majority of Americans reasonably presumed politics would continue more-or-less as usual. After decades of frustrating yet rather consistent Neoliberal politics stretching back to the Reagan Administration of the 80s, wherein both major political parties seemed more like different sides of the same policy coin rather than ideological opposites, discontented populist wings within both parties were clearly growing in prominence. Yet, left-leaning progressives and rightwing nationalists alike remained unable to capture the majority of the vote from their respective sides, let alone coax enough moderates and independents in the ideological middle to win the White House. That all changed, however, with the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. Since his ascension to the Oval Office, America's political discourse has been treading dangerously close to the edge of losing the democratic republic we hold dear. Sadly...

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 ...