The average American citizen has something that looks like democracy, but no influence. From Fred Reed at fredoneverything.com:
I am communing in my office with a sufficiency of Wild Turkey, the whiskey of the great Hunter Thompson. With its help I think curmudgeonly thoughts about America, which is over, done, surrounded by feeding leeches, ticks, hag fish, lampreys, and corporations. And Joe Biden. I find this deeply satisfying.
Here you have to understand curmudgeonry. We in our ashen-souled trade are misunderstood. We do not enjoy undeserved suffering. If you fall off a motorcycle while doing wheelies, or contract malaria in the jungles of Africa, you will have our sympathy. But self-inflicted and avoidable catastrophe, ah, this warms the cockles of our hearts. Whatever a cockle is. When an entire country voluntarily disintegrates in a maelstrom of pointless rot, for curmudgeons it is better than vox seats at the Superbowl.
This may not be excessively coherent. Everything in moderation, I say. If the good Lord had wanted consistency, he would not have invented Wild Turkey. Anyway, attempted thoughts:
America is not a country but a swarm of special interests that happen to be in the same place. They siphon money from the great, semiconscious, unhappy citizenry, about whom none of them give a wan, etiolated damn. It is adroitly done and, in its craftiness, worthy of admiration. It is also worthy of a national lynch mob or a high-throughput guillotine.
“Heaven is beyond the stars, but hell is always underfoot.” – Japanese Proverb