Plutocracy

The good thing about the United States is that we are a large, stable and diverse nation. We have many freedoms and a lot of space to move around if we don't like it somewhere anymore. Our culture is known as innovative, a successful melting pot, the envy of many other nations. Yet the lack of having many other nations nearby doing things differently, together with a politically very established way of thinking, makes it difficult for ourselves to see who we really are in all our aspects. Especially in politics, we have important blind spots that are not addressed in school, not highlighted in our news papers, and left out of our discussions.

In reality, it is not that difficult to understand cultural blind spots, and other nations may have some of their own, too. Our blind spots are intertwined with our political system like color prints with just two colors: red and blue. When we have seen pictures our entire life containing the colors red and blue — augmented with the use of black ink — we may think to see a colorful picture in front of us even when it does not contain any yellow ink. Come to think of it: we may have heard of yellow, but our culture deals with it effectively, because yellow is not a good color. Almost as if it is better, we rather not deal with yellow at all. Who needs those cowards, anyway?

The example is simple — and almost silly if it weren't accurate. We do not have yellow in our political system. If it pops up somewhere it is often just a blimp on our radar screen, gaining importance only during exceptional occasions, but never gaining any real and lasting power. Third parties can play the spoiler role (Ralph Nader helping George W. Bush get elected, Ross Perot helping Bill Clinton into the spot lights), yet these others never get to play their role center stage. We consider ourselves a democracy, and see ourselves as the example for other nations to follow, but we consider it yellow to follow the examples set by others. Foremost, we look for answers by looking at ourselves.

The idea of who we are and what we are may be stronger than our reality supports. The idea of our democracy is We, the People, but the reality of our democracy is that we are not that well represented by our representatives. And this is where the example of a picture missing the yellow color comes in handy. We actually see the entire picture, understand the meaning of it very well, but we do not grasp some of the specific aspects that become immediately clear once we add yellow to the picture. Experience the effect for yourself in the picture below in which the yellow segment was removed, and the level of brightness was increased by a third (to counter the darkness when the yellow color was removed). Roll over the image to see the full color picture.

The lack of yellow is not important at all to understand the entire picture, but the lack of that color is totally important for certain segments of the picture. Equally, the lack of a third viable party in our system is tremendously important to the outcome — not for all, but for some. The needs of some segments in our society find no expression in our system of representation, or they are only partially expressed in an unrefined way. It has often been said during the eternal debate on our health care system that when the middle class gets hurt by the current system, the current system will get fixed. And there is a lot of truth to that.

As long as one-fifth to one-third of the population cannot get the appropriate representation in our two party system, the two parties in control may not feel the need to come up with solutions that can actually satisfy all parties involved. Have you ever heard of certain segments in society in all other rich nations complain about their health care system? Neither have we. Some of these nations have nationalized health care; others have a privatized but well-regulated health care system. Granted, individuals may complain, but no complains are logged for any specific industries, any specific agencies or branches of commerce, any specific race, gender or age group. But we have heard those complaints for many years in our nation, haven't we? But we ignore their calls, because those are just people dressed up in yellow.

Naturally, the two birds colored in red and blue are the picture of the overall result. The picture above shows the color indication with just a republican administration. It contains still some blue, because both parties must be attractive to the middle of the road in our society. So, 67% of the blue was replaced by red. Roll over the picture with your mouse and the democratic version appears. The blue was augmented and the red diminished by 67% of the original two color picture. The overall picture is still recognizable as two birds, yet the specific focus of each party is clearly visible, while the needs represented by the other color are less obvious. Both parties take care of their own needs first, tend to change some of the attention away from spots the oppositional party may emphasize, and neither party pays much attention to the spots that would be highlighted by yellow.

Possibly, you may have noticed that the differences in flipping between red and blue are not as significant as the first picture of the birds — with yellow being added back in. Some of the differences are due to the specific characteristics of color (red, for instance, is often more dominant than blue or yellow), but here at localParty.Org we claim that in reality that is true as well. The difference between having two parties or three parties is far greater than the differences between just two parties. The third party adds significantly to empowering all aspects in society, augmenting emancipation throughout.

One word that may more appropriately cover our political reality, or at least one that definitively points in the correct direction of what we have here is plutocracy. We bet you use the word plutocracy fewer than once every decade. Look it up in the dictionary, or ask someone else first if they know what it means. It is a word that is not mentioned much. Maybe we are not familiar with it because it is written in yellow, and those benefiting from this plutocracy don't want you to get too familiar with the word. You may use it in conversations, and then you might want to change the political system so the yellow nature of some becomes more obvious for all to see. Of course we all know about the true nature of our plutocracy — much of plutocracy has been said about our politicians — but it doesn't stand out in our minds as the aspect that makes our democracy that much different from any other democracy.