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In reply to the discussion: The TPP, if Passed, Spells the End of Popular Sovereignty for The United States [View all]Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Niccolo Machiavelli explained how to undertake a revolution from above without most people even noticing. In his Discourses on Livy, he wrote that one "must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones."
That is, keep the old government structures, even while you make profound changes to the actual system, because the appearances are all that most people will notice.
So today, instead of seeing the corpse of a republic in which we live, we see merely the dead mans clothing. Those clothes look the same as ever, albeit increasingly worn. We have had a quiet revolution
This is, after all, post-9/11 America, in which we are collectively driving our vehicle down a dangerous mountain path, only to discover suddenly that were not doing the driving.
We no longer govern ourselves. There is no "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," in any meaningful sense in any sense beyond what it might have meant to a citizen of the U.S.S.R. in the bad old days of the Soviet Union.
As Machiavelli saw in his own time (and as he essentially foretold regarding our own), the dramatic changes to our political institutions have occurred without the people really noticing.
What has happened by degrees over the past fifty years is that our traditional political structure and culture have eroded and degraded into something that prior generations of Americans would have found shocking and unrecognizable. Indeed, they would have found our current state of affairs to be positively un-American.
Machiavelli certainly had it right, but an addendum is necessary. After the true and deep structures of power have been sufficiently transformed, the outward appearance must eventually catch up.