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Chapter 31
How to Bring True Democracy to America

It is well and good to envision and even write about an improved American society and world, but if one has no idea how to bring such a vision about, how to make it a reality, then it can only remain a vision. How do we go about bringing true democracy to America? How can we create a new fourth branch of government (a demos), remove the appropriate power from the current plutocratic branches of government, and instill that power within it? How does one go about producing such a transformation?

We must rule out violent, bloody revolution. It only brings new tyrants, new plutocrats. We can also safely rule out change from above. The privileged elites who originally created and who today still populate our government have had more than 200 years to introduce at least some measure of true democracy into our society, and they have not done so. The change must come from the people at-large, from “we the people.”

The human race is already caught up within a great revolution, the electronic revolution. Almost overnight we have leaped into a massive technological transformation. Worldwide communication has become nearly instantaneous; computers have become ubiquitous; and all has become interconnected into giant networked systems.

So magnificent and eye-dazzling has been this transformation that it has masked how little our relationship with each other has actually changed over the millennia. In ancient times the organized few exploited and enslaved the many, and it still does so today. Given this circumstance, this relationship, our rapidly expanding electronic world is only being used to create better control and exploitation, improved enslavement.

Although they differ in their severity and in their cultural artifacts, at the heart of the American, Chinese, and Russian societies lies the same plutocratic form, governance by the wealthy. One can almost see a group of old friends—plutocrats, well-heeled, cigar-smoking industrialist, military, and government types—sitting over drinks in a fabulous, comfortable room in one of their countries chewing over political strategies. The American is laughing and saying, “Gentlemen, there’s a better way to imprison the people. You needn’t get so brutal about it. If you keep them in debt and give them the illusion of freedom and power—some kind of little ‘democracy’ toy to play with—then they are pacified and they settle down to work creating wealth for you. Use the media to imprison the people’s minds, then you needn’t imprison their bodies, at any rate, not too many bodies, not an unmanageable number. And our would-be insurrectionists and revolutionaries don’t know who to kill or how to topple the works. We are protected by an impenetrable labyrinth of fanciful financial instruments and inscrutable legalese. It’s so much cleaner and very convenient. Our way of harnessing the people and siphoning off their wealth really is the better way. You ought to try it.” Perhaps at sometime something like this little imaginary chat did take place, for now the Chinese and the Russians seem to have seen the light and are, indeed, moving toward the Western way.

If an electronic demos containing the right issues is not created in the right way, then someday the elite will hand down to the electorate from on high as a preemptive measure the wrong electronic voting system containing trivial issues designed to prevent the inclusion of true democracy within our government, keeping real power solely in the hands of the elite.

But it need not be so. Technology is neutral. Its moral effect depends entirely on what one chooses to create and how one uses it. That which can be used to enslave can also be used to liberate. The trick is how to use the new technology to bring about liberation. And the trick there is how to use the new technology to outflank the few who are using the technology to improve their control over the many.

“We the people” should use the Internet.

America is not a true democracy. It possesses merely the illusion of democracy, a little game to hide from the people their true circumstance, their powerlessness and enslavement. The American people have never participated in a true democratic process in which they held real power. The voting and elections that take place in America are meaningless exercises in futility. It does not matter which wealthy or wealth-serving people are carefully selected and groomed by the powerful few and presented to the people for election to office. The current power structure and political-economic order, the current system—plutocracy, governance by the wealthy—always remains in place. In their believing what we have today to be democracy, the American people show that they do not understand what democracy really is.

We should use the Internet to show people what true democracy is. By creating a demos on the Internet within which the members of the electorate may participate, people would come to understand what a true democratic process is and glean its implications for their lives in the real world: “Oh, this is what a real democracy is! I want this in our real government!”

As almost anybody who has had much to do with today’s Internet knows, it is very fragile and unstable. Data transmission is slow and intermittent, connections become disconnected, web sites crash, dead and broken links clutter the landscape, and a small army of bright, misguided computer hackers take unending glee at breaking into web sites, raising havoc, and cranking out a steady stream of ever-improved computer viruses.

Given these circumstances, getting an Internet demos up and running reliably and securely would be a daunting task. Most likely any group of people who attempted to create and run such a site on the Internet would be flying by the seat of their pants and operating on a shoestring. Add to these difficulties the likelihood that even a fairly large group of Internet users who joined and participated in the demos would not accurately reflect our whole society but would represent youth over age, the more educated over the less educated, and the upper economic half of the population more than the lower half, thus skewing the demos consensus.

None of these difficulties and challenges are insurmountable. Despite all, a demos could be put together and run well enough to achieve its central purpose: to demonstrate to the American people and to the people of the world what it is like to participate in a true democratic process, the idea being that they may compare their current political systems with it and come to demand that a demos be added to their real governments. The other proposals presented in this work could also be incorporated into the demos site creating an understanding and demand for these reforms to our society as well.

A working demos would also serve as the tool and test bed for the improvement of the demos’ physical infrastructure, software and user interface, security, mathematical system, and rules and procedures. The site’s creators and managers could enter into a synergetic interaction with its users to discover new ideas and better ways of achieving ends. Demos participants would gain experience and confidence in the art and practice of deliberative democracy.

America’s currently established elite would, however, point to the unreliability and insecurity of the Internet and to the very possibly embarrassing instability of the demos site, and try to make good reason of it, along with other reasons they would no doubt dream up, as to why a demos could not work and cannot be tried. The people creating, running, and participating in the demos should be prepared for this. There is a world of difference between running a demos on the current Internet on a shoestring and the creation and running of a real demos with the full weight and resources of the federal government and the American people behind it.

The process would start with a dedicated group of programmers, mathematicians, economists, and students of political science working together to create the demos site. Once the demos is operational and on the Internet, its existence would be made known, and people would be invited to participate. At first there would only be a few people participating at the site, but (hopefully) there would soon enough be a few hundred people and then a few thousand. The presence of the demos site could be made known by the people who created and maintained it and by the growing number of participants using every known method of Internet and other advertising. If the idea of a demos is attractive, demos deliberations are interesting, and voting results are promising, participants would tell their families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and others about it. Soon Internet-savvy news and interest groups would start asking, “What is all this hubbub about?” In time, the always-hungry news and interest groups around the country and world would hear about it, enquire, and report the news. If this scenario proves successful, then hundreds of thousands and even millions of people could end up participating in the demos.

All the while there would be an increasing individual and collective recognition of what a true democratic process is like. Standing in comparison within people’s minds would be the so-called democratic process that exists within our current American government. It would be clearly recognized as the scam and farce that it really is. More and more people would come to exclaim about the demos, “I want this in our real government!” In fact, since the Internet is a worldwide phenomenon, people around the world could and would explore the demos as “read-only” visitors, come to the same realization and understanding about the lack of any true democratic process within their own governments, and desire changes to their own governments as well.

As people participated in the demos, debated, and read and viewed more and more mass media discussions about the virtues of a demos and the shortcomings of our current government, our collective consciousness and will would move from desire to demand to action. A mass movement would be afoot. The current people of privilege, the establishment, would, of course, be dead set against it and make every kind of maneuver, manipulation, and sabotage against the success of the movement. But like an avalanche “we the people” would roll right over them and eventually win them over. In time, in a generation or two, history would prove and the leaders of those times whose predecessors resisted the fundamental changes to our government would come to see and agree that the changes affected our lives, our nation, and our world profoundly for the better.

Once the demos web site became sufficiently developed and functional and many people were frequenting the site, then we could treat the demos as if it would become the fourth branch of government. We could treat it as if it already were the fourth branch of government.

If this Internet demos came to be frequented by a large number of people with serious intent and result, it is entirely possible that it could become something of a power center in its own right even before a real demos became an official part of government. Our elected ‘representatives’ repeatedly toss biased polling results at us and tell us ad nauseam how “in touch” they are with our minds and hearts. The demos could become the place where the electorate’s real views concerning the issues were made known. It could also serve as a place for would-be political candidates to test the waters. Successful candidates could watch their names climb up the Candidates lists. The Internet demos could possibly come to be seen and felt as an alternate or “people’s” government. It could become a true political power to be reckoned with. In this way something of a demos could unofficially serve America (and prove itself) before a real demos were made an official part of government.

Another idea that could attract participation in an Internet demos even though it was not, as yet, an official part of the government is to include the currently sitting president, senators, and representatives in its Candidates lists. Also, during real elections, the names of those running for office could be added to the Candidates lists. Until the demos officially became the fourth branch of government, some temporary procedural rules would have to be added to accommodate the fact that it is not really the demos voting system by which the candidates are elected to office and officeholders maintain their seats in office. For example, both for seated officeholders and for candidates running in real elections, the names of candidates would occupy their correct positions in the Candidates lists but they would be highlighted. It would be a feather in a candidate’s or officeholder’s hat or a real embarrassment if he or she held poor ranking in a demos Candidates list by virtue of the number of demos votes the candidates received compared to other demos candidates. And it would be enlightening to see who would currently be occupying the seats of office if the demos vote were the final say in the matter.

If the Internet demos managed to develop a large number of active participants, then current officeholders may become curious or even seriously concerned about their rankings in the demos Candidates lists. Sitting officials and their followers may begin to actively participate in the demos to improve their showings. Everyone participating in the Internet demos may come to see it as an important place to evaluate candidates running for office in real elections. The demos could come to have real clout even before officially becoming the fourth branch of government.

From the moment of its first creation and function on the Internet until the demos finally became the new fourth branch of government, the demos should serve the dual roles of being a working demonstration of a demos and being the center of nationwide organization and action designed to win its inclusion in government, a True Democracy Movement. Along with much other information, the demos should prominently display for each candidate his or her support or lack of support as demonstrated by words and deeds both within and outside of government for the constitutional and other changes that would be required to make it happen. The millions of voters in the current electoral system should make such support a litmus test of greater importance than any other considerations when voting for candidates. This litmus test should continue for however many years it takes to win the goal, the demos actually becoming the official fourth branch of government, at which time the Movement portion of the demos site would be discontinued as no longer relevant.

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