"THIN DEMOCRACY"

From PBS's NOW:

BRANCACCIO: So, if the goal is living democracy. What, is it dead?

FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ: Well, it's very weak. It's very frail. It's very ineffective. Because I call it actually thin democracy. And thin democracy is what I grew up believing in. That all we needed was elections and a market economy and hey we've got democracy. We're home free.

I didn't realize that actually democracy's premise is the dispersion of power, right. Everybody can have a voice. But our market economy is based on one rule, highest return to existing wealth. So, what happens is that wealth keeps concentrating, concentrating until it's so concentrated that it can subvert our political process. So, that we have 56 lobbyists in Washington for every one person that we put there to represent us. So, that's--

BRANCACCIO: Quite a ratio.

FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ: --thin. That's weak. It can't serve us.

BRANCACCIO: And we clearly do have a problem here. I saw this NBC/WALL STREET JOURNAL poll that showed that 24 percent of Americans believe that the Republicans have their point of view, that they reflect their priorities. The Democrats don't do much better. To put it another way, essentially 2/3 of Americans don't think that Congress has their priorities. Something is broken down here.

FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ: Absolutely, I've seen the same sorts of figures like 90 percent of us think that corporations have too much sway in Washington.

And we have been warned about this. We have been warned by Thomas Jefferson, by Dwight Eisenhower. But no one warned us more eloquently than Franklin Delano Roosevelt in April of 1938.

He said, "The liberty of democracy is not safe if we tolerate the growth of private power to the point that it is stronger than the democratic state itself." That in its essence is fascism. That's what he warned us of.

So, that's the fundamental bottom line for me of thin democracy is that it's vulnerable to take over. And that's why--something like 3/4 of us say that-- those in Washington-- it's run by a small group who don't care about anybody but themselves.

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"Thin democracy." Well put. I'm always looking for good ways to explain to people who still believe in the system why it doesn't work. Like my Dad. I've told him on more than one occasion how corporate power is essentially running the government. He just kind of smiles and nods, quietly disagreeing, but, I'm sure, thinking deep down that I'm totally full of shit. It strikes me that many, if not most, Americans simply are incapable of intellectually digesting the fact that our republic has been hijacked by the concentrations of private power known as corporations. It's along the same lines as the "not in my back yard" mentality: people just cannot accept that things are not as they were taught when they were children. But I think the "thin democracy" concept is a much easier sell than my usual "no democracy" song and dance. Maybe that's what I'll be ranting and raving about back home this Christmas.

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