How Is This Democratic?

Our government is supposed to be a Democratic Republic. The founding fathers drafted all those documents to assure this. Either they failed miserably or they had a different idea of what democracy means.

There has been a lot of finger pointing as to who is dividing this country. There isn’t much dispute about the fact that the country is divided, the dispute is who is dividing us. Truth is the founding fathers did from the get go.

The Constitution is the foundation for how our government is structured. It is supposed to be a system of checks and balances, at least the founding fathers said it was yet they set it up to be anything but. The president who is an elected official, only needs to be a natural born citizen, over 35 years of age and must have resided in the country for a certain number of years. That’s it. Those are all the qualifications necessary to occupy the office of the most powerful person in the free world. A high school equivalency is not even required. There is no application to fill out, no resume’ submitted. There isn’t even a basic quiz to demonstrate literacy on any level. Now I get that the founders were all wrapped up in this new found freedom, that they wanted to start a new world where anyone could achieve anything they wished; anyone could obtain the American Dream. I don’t think they put anymore thought into it than that.

The president who doesn’t have to have a minute of experience in anything, who can literally have zero knowledge of or even a fundamental understanding of government operations, policies, procedures or laws. No military experience is required for the president who is also the Commander in Chief of all 4 branches of the Military. The president doesn’t have to have a clue about the  cabinets and departments under his command; what they do, how they do it or who is supposed to answer to who. The president is the one who appoints people to head the Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs. The president can nominate anyone for any position regardless of there expertise or experience in that particular office or in public service of any kind.

The president also appoints the Attorney General and Supreme Court Justices the former is the office that is suppose to represent the government and the latter is supposed to be part of the system of checks and balances. Given just that fact right there the system is doomed to fail. The president has hire and fire authority over the offices that are responsible for keeping the executive office in check. The president is the only one who has that authority.  The president also appoints  the heads of the FBI, the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff and circuit court judges. The presidents authority to fill all these position absolutely undermines the idea of democracy, how is this a fair system when only one party has the right to control everything unchecked?

And these positions are filled and vacated with each presidential term, which means that the fundamental administrative procedures can be completely different every four years. Procedures like environmental protection which includes laws on emissions and industrial pollution, control over educational standards and budgeting, health insurance laws, women’s rights, rules for financial institutions, tax rates, gun laws, marriage laws. This  is absolute instability and chaos, especially when the person in charge has no idea of how things he is in charge of operate.

Now lets look at Congress. This whole idea is anything but democratic. The Speaker of the House has the absolute authority over what comes up for or vote; and what doesn’t. How is it democratic to refuse to let something like gun control law proposals to be voted on? And when the speaker is from one party and members of the other party know that a bill they don’t want passed is up for a vote they have the option to take advantage of  this wonderfully brilliant idea called filibuster. A filibuster is when a member of Congress uses their right to debate a bill on the floor to simply run out the clock, like a quarterback taking a knee and running the clock out. Ted Cruz a republican actually spent over 12 hours reading Dr. Seuss books. Seriously. The clock ran out and the bill didn’t get voted on so it was just simply filed away and that was that. Better yet is the right that one party has to just change the rules when they know a bill they want passed is not going to get the votes needed to pass by lowering that number. For any individual bill they can just decide that only 51 votes is needed instead of the standard 61. Very democratic.

There are many other things that upset this system of checks and balances as well as the democratic process like the president meeting with members of his own party within Congress without the other party members of Congress there. The current administration is currently under investigation for collusion with Russians. Those in question seem to be very indiscreet and bold in their actions and attitude about the whole thing. Why shouldn’t they be? If they are indicted or found guilty the president can just pardon them. Sweet deal if you are someone who is willing to commit crimes to benefit the president. This not only allows room for criminal activity it practically guarantees it.

The simple fact that there can be, or always is a house majority negates any hope of democracy. When one party ‘controls’ the Congress and one party is represented by the highest office in the land how is that a democratic government?

 

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