In a democracy every citizen has certain basic rights that the state cannot take away from them. In political philosophy, the phrase consent of the governed refers to the idea that a government’s legitimacy and moral right to use state power is justified and lawful only when consented to by the people or society over which that political power is exercised. Elections are the practical means for people to assert their sovereignty. This evolves around free elections – means all adult citizens can vote in the election that are fair, which means all votes must be accurately counted. Much of democracy is rooted in constitutionalism, which means the people limit government power by authoritative fundamental laws called “constitutions”. These documents state what power government shall have. In defining theses powers, constitutions limit them. This is so a government may exercise only those powers defined in the constitution.
There are forces in a democracy that serve to hold the excesses of government in check. This force is called liberalism. Liberalism includes activities such as freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. US judiciary has the power of judicial review – the power to declare laws passed by legislatures to be null and void if they contradicted the nations constitution. Trump’s SCOTUS nominee, Judge Gorsuch is a natural law thinker. Such court nominations tend to support the tradition of natural law of a market – small government and minimal regulations. Kevin Gross notes, technology can improve or undermine democracy depending on how it is used and who controls it. Right now, it is controlled by too few. History knows that when a great deal of power is concentrated in the hands of a few, the outcome is not good for the many, not good for democracy.
When a small group of people rules a society, the political system is considered an oligarchy; when only money and wealth determine how a society is controlled, the political system is a plutocracy. From the standpoint of a democratic society, both oligarchy and plutocracy are inherently unjust and corrupt. The job of the politician in a plutocracy is always to find the line that provides the lowest level of pay, security, housing, consumer protection, health care and political access for society so that the economic elite can extract and hoard the greatest amount of wealth, power, and immunity from justice for themselves. In a plutocracy, commercialization dominates far beyond the realm of economics and business, everything is ‘for sale’, and money is power. But in an authentic democracy, there must be commercial-free zones where the power of human rights, citizenship, community, equality and justice, are free from the corrupting influence of money.
John Sniadowsk wrote, “It is proving very difficult to regulate multinational corporations because of the variety of different national government agendas. A globally enacted set of rules to control multinationals is unlikely to happen because some sovereign states have very illiberal and hierarchical control over agendas and see technology as a way to dominate their citizens with their agendas as well as influence the democratic viewpoints of what they consider to be hostile states. Democracy in technological terms can be weaponized.” Basically, one must now believe that governments don’t fully understand the tools, and they will fail repeatedly to regulate or organize them properly. In addition, one should not have faith the private companies are democratic, and therefore they are apt to reinforce capitalism alone, not democracy. Until the balance is reorganized, and we shift to support soft capitalism/strong democracy, any technology we create will continue to underserve democracy.
Robert Epstein observes randomized, controlled experiments show that Google search results alone can easily shift more than 20% of undecided voters – up to 80% in some demographic groups – without people knowing and without leaving a paper trail – based on search engine manipulation effect. The genie is out of the bottle and it does not bode well for systems of democracy that have already been undermined in Western states. A state of global cyber war now exists and is likely to persist over the next decade. The oligopoly of state-supported tech companies, whether in the U.S. or China, will be difficult to break. David Golumbia wrote, “Unless there is a massive change to democratic control over digital technology, that technology will continue to erode democracy as it was designed to do and as its most ardent advocates openly say they want, despite [the fact that they] sometimes use the language of democracy and allied values like free expression to justify their antidemocratic actions.”1
The Koch brothers first entered politics as the financiers of the nascent Libertarian Party in the 1970s that was formed in response to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 defeat. Reagan’s smashing political success pushed libertarianism in new directions. The Kochs focused their funding on institutions such as the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies, to promote ideas on neoliberalism – minimize the role of government, regulations and unions – to create wealth. The main difference between libertarianism and neoliberalism – a controversial term that refers primarily to the 20th century resurgence of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism, is basically, neoliberalism has a lower threshold of government ability to cope with problems. Their support for a largely uncompromising libertarian philosophy and politics helped to create the modern Republican Party – and therefore indirectly lay the groundwork for the polarization in the present congress.
To distract voters, Republicans now embrace the uncertain populist policies of division and misinformation. Fox News tells viewers they are the only reliable source of political information – re-enforcing the alt-right propaganda in social media. In post-truth politics social media assists political actors who mobilize voters through a crude blend of outlandish conspiracy theories and suggestive half-truths, barely concealed hate-speech, as well as outright lies. These “populist” voters now live in a media bubble, getting their news from sources that play to their identity-politics desires, which means that even if you offer them a better deal, they won’t hear about it, or believe it if told. We now realize the need to control how social media is manipulated by big money. Friedrich Nietzsche claimed there are no facts only interpretations. In his view there was no objective fact about what has value in itself – culture consisted of beliefs developed to perpetuate a particular power structure.
Identity politics is an ideology that convinces people to band together in society and agree to a common project. There is now concern identity politics is hampering empathy and communication. The Senate cloture rule – which requires 60 members to end debate on most topics and move to a vote – poses a steep barrier to President Biden’s policy agenda. Voices on both sides have called for reform in the face of partisan gridlock, because a filibuster is used to extend debate, allowing one or more senators to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a given proposal. A Republican minority can block the size of relief bills; like they did in 2008; and like they are now presently for the size of 2021 COVID response. There has been dramatic use of the filibuster in the last 50 years. Because of the polarized climate, it is necessary to change the cloture rules to ensure the voice of the majority is heard.
The Protect My Vote campaign shows how online outfits are at work creating the appearance of evidence for assertions of rampant fraud, promoting “mail balloting results in lost votes and lost rights.” This group purchased over 150 ads on their associated page on Facebook which was viewed over 100 thousand times in a month. They were designed to tap existing anxiety about the integrity of the voting system to convince voters in swing states where minority turnout could be decisive that mail-in votes are not reliable. During the spring of 2020, mostly conservative activists held protests in at least a dozen states to protest ongoing state stay-at-home orders. FreedomWorks, a Washington-based conservative advocacy organization, helped with promotion and logistics. While most of the protests have taken place in states with Republican governors, they highlighted only those in states with Democratic governors.
It is about a system, corrupted by the influence of big donors and powerful interests, that makes voting more difficult than necessary, particularly for historically disadvantaged groups. Republicans are using the same baseless lies about voting fraud to push a staggering number of laws to scale back voting rights. The reason they’re willing to weaken American democracy is very simple: it’s all about retaining power. The rules being put into place will make it more difficult, if not impossible, for many minority voters to participate in elections. In addition, these states are allowing partisan groups to take over running elections. As a group Republicans, are pushing towards replacing democracy with a system where a powerful minority holds disproportionate and borderline tyrannical control over government and blocks the majority of Americans from having meaningful say over the direction of the country. There is a need for federal legislation to prevent partisan bias from determining whether elections were conducted properly.
A plot to weaken US democracy has been in play for 50 years. In 1980 Charles Koch sought ways to steer American politics to the right without having to win the popular vote. He chose do it through philanthropy, with it’s guarantee of anonymity. This led to the founding of think tanks like the Kato Institute to create so-called discussion papers that would drive discussion of right-wing policy issues like minimal government and regulations into mainstream media. This was done with such consistency that people forgot that the saying “capitalism and freedom were interchangeable” was an ideology, not established fact. Reconciliation hasn’t just excluded types of legislation; it has had a bad effect on the legislation it includes. Any change will be an uphill journey, as the people now in control – the economic elite – will not readily let go of their power without legislation to control big money in elections.
1 Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie (21 Feb 2020) Concerns about democracy in the digital age. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/02/21/concerns-about-democracy-in-the-digital-age/