POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKLESTEIN IN THE TIMES
The importance of U.S. politics to Britain and others is not for techniques or learning about democratic practices.
The truth is America is and always has been a marginally democratic country.
It not only has always displayed a certain flirting with fascism, it has supported countless such people abroad, and the truth is that its 18th century Constitution is heavily laced with anti-democratic features, favoring stability and property over all else.
Those who doubt this last, owing to the Bill of Rights, will need a hard course in America history to understand how meaningless the American system has rendered the Bill over much of the country’s history, and I’m not referring to the obvious example of slavery.
The Bill of Rights over much of the country’s history was not in any way enforced since states said the national court cannot enforce it. Even today, we feel ripples of this in matters like it’s okay to hold people illegally and torture them just offshore or the Supreme Court effectively appointing a president.
Why Britains and others need to be aware of American politics is simply to be aware of what is coming next from the bloated imperial power.
America's population is several percent of the world's. America's politically active (only just over half of those eligible vote in presidential elections, and the money funding the elections comes from a tiny slice of 1%) is on the order of 1 to 2% of the world.
This makes them, de facto, an aristocracy, whether or not they regard themselves as such. Their percent of politically active out of the world's people is about equal to the percent of China in the Communist Party or, for that matter, the percent of Britains who could vote in 1776. And that’s more less what it was in the early colonies.
This wouldn't matter if they didn't interfere in everyone's business, but they do, constantly. They more than interfere, they bully, bribe, and bomb.
So, effectively, the world has just what America whined about in 1776, taxation without representation.
Don’t be surprised one day to see a tax bill from Washington for services rendered.
