I’m still digesting the last election, and the unwillingness of my fellow Americans to do their duty.

In some ways the phrase ascribed to Churchill about democracy is just wrong. On a national level I’m not sure how many literal democracies exist in this world, but I’m pretty sure that if the demos don’t participate in making the decisions then you really don’t have a democracy.

What we do have is a sort of poll-driven good ol’ boys club, where enough people participate to keep the engines going but not enough to really change anything.

Writing (as we know it) was only invented about 6000 years ago (a coincidence with the beliefs of creationism that is not unrelated) and so “history” can’t really reach way back in time, but from what little I’ve read of past societies it seems like most above-the-village civilization was based on military-enforced hierarchies, run by (1) a monarch, or (2) an oligarchy, or (3) a bureaucracy tended by more powerful families.

Does the US exist more as a type of #3 above?

For all the hand wringing over immigrants, illegal under the current laws, what happened to the supposed demographic shift in places like TX where a large latino population was supposed to change everything?

Well, nothing changed because few people voted.