Cheatocracy is the same as democracy up until the election has been decided and the winner is in place. Then the winner discards his campaign promises and does something else, even the exact opposite.
One example is the Biden 2020 election. He promised to combat Climate Change, to bring costs down, to spend 'every minute of every working day' working to make Americans lives better. To visit the Southern Border, and to bring 'expertise' in foreign policy. 'Expertise' seems to have meant to send huge quantities of weapons to Kyiv, rather than smaller ones. As for diplomacy, that word is too long for him. He is blind to what our allies do for us, and he doesn't seem to think about partnerships with other countries, just how to fight a war against them.
Bidden is trying too hard to be a war-time President. We don't need another one of those, nor can we afford another one. As much as people moaned about Donald Trump, he didn't start a war and he did as well as could be expected against the unknown disease COVID.
And while the US dukes it out with Russia in a proxy war in Eastern Ukraine most of the rest of the world is joining together in large trading blocs, forming mutually beneficial relationships.
Unfortunately there is no better alternative. There was an old Dr. Who episode titled Vengeance on Varos (1985), based on the premise of a direct democracy where the population watching on television could vote to inflict a ray that would cause pain and even horrible mutating effects on their leader if they did not think he was doing a good job. But even that storyline tried to show what was flawed with such a concept, the population taking out their disgruntlement on a leader who was faced with a difficult scenario -- potentially blamed for the consequences of whatever decision he made either way.
There has to be. The US monopolizes the position at the bottom of the Current Account balances, and the US has been involved in more was since WW2 than any other nation. The UK is a close second and is also the nation most often second to bottom on the CA balance. And the 'top' of the US government believes the world is still in the 1960s.
There probably is. Find a way to have the smartest people make the decisions based upon the evidence and greatest good combined with respect for fairness and rights. I guess it would be technocracy. There's always an undercurrent of democracy though. Technocracy I vaguely described could only exist if enough people buy into it. With the current culture here, they wouldn't. Any system: A republic, a monarchy, fascism require that enough people buy in or fail to care enough to take a risk for change. Of course conspiracy theorists would almost always be at odds with an ideal system of government that deals in facts.
If there is zero connection between what a politician says and what he / she / it / they do /does, then the public may be left with zero control over the government so it isn't a democracy.
Yes, and that sounds nice, but there are two potential big problems with that. First, the politicians in power can block those policies if they don't like them. We have all sorts of examples of this with state courts overturning referendums where the people voted on something. (Like Proposition 187 in 1994 in California) Or the politicians can just ignore it, or put on a show of following the policy even though they aren't really doing anything meaningful to support it. The other problem is that in many cases the public masses are just stupid, and do not fully understand the complexities of an issue. The average voter usually can't or will not spend that much time researching the intricacies of all issues. There have been some referendums placed on state ballots over the years that were designed to trick the people. (Fortunately most of them do not pass) I am mostly in favor of direct voting on the issues, but the majority of people are ignorant about how stupid the average person in society is. Traditionally, direct democracies in history existed in situations where the vote was limited to a smaller and more specific class of the population.
This has been a problem throughout history. Kings could almost do whatever they wanted. But if they went too overboard in abuses and ruining the country, there was a possibility they might be assassinated, or face a rebellion during a time of national weakness. Political theorists decided it was not a good idea to place too much power into the hands of any one person, and that there should be some checks and balances on the power of the king. So we see things like a house of nobles form in Poland (the sejm), Sweden, and even Russia at one time (council of boyars in Kievan Rus). Germany had a more elaborate arrangement under the "Holy Roman Empire", which would often elect one of the more powerful amongst themselves as the "emperor", but who in reality only held more limited power and influence over the confederation. It was easier to control the smaller kings and nobles than the more powerful ones, a distinction they actually officially recognized and codified into law, so if you were a king of one of the great states you did not have to answer to any court but rather theoretically answered directly to the emperor.
Yes, very true, we need beoth the policies and the politicians to implement the policies. The problem behind the 'stupidity of the masses' is the dishonesty of the language we use. I guess that originates in the CIA and State Department and media where the news is created, and the White house and other politicians and the 'think tanks'.
Here's my idea of an exercise on disentangling the language: 1 How much money was allocated in 2022 by the US for defense? 2 Who started the war in Ukraine? 3 What have the casualties been on each side of the Ukraine war? I've heard the complaint that people are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. This criticism is not useful because 'facts' are worded to mislead which is why it is so difficult to get any sense out of anybody. And that is why people can argue about the 'facts' themselves at length. Evaluation of who is right and who is wrong is usually impossible when the 'facts' themselves are wrong.
Here's my attempt at answers: 1 How much money was allocated in 2022 by the US for defense? HOMELAND SECURITY, 2022 : $76.299 billion in total funding As was discovered on 9/11 the Department of Defense had no direct responsibility for defense. Subsequently the Department of Homeland Security was established, moving in various existing assets that could be used for defense, which now amount to somewhere in the region of 10% of total military expenditure.
The other 90% contributes nothing to actual defense. Take one example: spending on aircraft carriers. Aircraft can be used for defense but putting them on an aircraft carrier and taking them to the other side of the world ensures they won't be used for defense. When it comes to defense the carriers are more of a liability than an asset. Aircraft land bases can have longer and wider runways, are easier to land on because they don't buck in the waves, and are more difficult to sink. If for some reason aircraft are wanted on the other side of the world there is in-flight refueling.
2 Who started the war in Ukraine? Well on Feb 24th of 2022 AD, Joe Biden arrived late to give the press conference and gave the sort of impression he was getting the latest updates and the situation was just then unfolding. He did not explicitly state the war had started just then or even that day, because the Gen Sec of NATO stated it had started in 2014, which is correct. What actually happened was 8 years after the conflict started, and 8 days after the weapons arrived from the US and Kyiv started using the new shells to bombard Donetsk, then finally Russia moved some military forces in. So having arrived 8 years late Russia were then blamed for starting the war. On Feb 24 2022 Joey Biden did his best to make in sound like the whole war had just started that very morning.
