elected dictatorship

i have an ongoing argument, with a number of people, that America is not a democracy. i used to claim the position that we are a representative republic. it is obvious, we do not actually chose most things ourselves. we choose people who choose them.

turns out i am wrong.

lets think about it for a moment. we elect people to represent our will in the government. but the simple truth is that they do not. oh i am not claiming that they get elected and then do the opposite of what we want. no, they get elected and then do what ever they wish, and any resemblance that bears to our wishes is simple coincidence.

look at it this way. we have ways of expressing our opinions to our elected representatives. they have ways of collecting them. but unless they feel it is a big enough issue to prevent them from being re-elected, they don't even try.

witness the protests before the Iraq war. but they didn't stop anything form happening, did they?

witness the current opinion of the war. a majority now feel that bush was and is wrong, lied, made mistakes, and misled the world. a majority now think that if that is indeed true, he should be impeached.

and yet, when one man dares call for censure, a much less drastic move than impeachment, our "representatives", even those of the opposition party, can not be bothered to follow the will of the people.

what is more, we are so used to it, that we don't seem to care...

our "representatives" are much like most peoples favorite sports team. we choose them, mostly for arbitrary reasons, and once chosen, we stay loyal. the ref can't make good calls against them, they can do no wrong.

it takes a lot for us to give up on our team.

and they count on that. cause there is no logical reason to support them.

i realized this while wondering what a more feminist view of power structures might look like. one feminist view suggests that we must find a way to share power. a way to have power with others rather than power over others.

the thing is, i think this can be accomplished by a true representative government.

governmental decisions are often times about things complicated enough that we are well served to have specialists. a democracy is not necessarily practical. a politician in this sense would then be a person who specialized in two things, first a broad understanding of general knowledge and thinking, to enable them to have the breadth necessary to comprehend anything that they had to deal with in an official capacity, and second, the communication skills to both translate those issues they have to deal with into a simple message for their constituents, and then listen to the responses of the same, and act on them.

that would be a true public servant.

in short, an ideal elected official in this sense would be nothing more than a liaison between the general population, and and the bureaucracy. what is another word for that........

oh i know! representative.

pretty wild, i know. but hey, i can dream.