Seriously, What Term Would You Use to Describe Our Current Form of Government?

[unhappycamper]

Seriously, What Term Would You Use to Describe Our Current Form of Government?
by Barry Yourgrau | Aug 27 2007 - 1:56pm


I originally wanted to write in response to Bush's "Iraq Is Vietnam" ploy.

I wanted to ask how exactly the Trad Media (like that awful Briticism "trad jazz"?) copes with a government that acts so fundamentally and repeatedly in bad faith. With a President and Administration whose every pronouncement, practically, personal or institutional, is a construct of distortion, fabrication, lies big and small but always self-serving, and history brazenly rewritten--like copy for advertising fraud. Or a Soviet tract.

The answer is, of course, that Traditional Media doesn't cope. Bush's words are accorded the protocol of respect, as if they were still part of a regular political order. But they are not. They remain, as they were back in the days when Bush was running against Gore, radical flimflam, an ongoing con job.

~snip~

What exactly does it mean when John Dean uses the phrase "worse than Watergate?"

Or when Benjamin Ferencz, a chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, says that Bush belongs in the defense box at the Hague because "(a) prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

To bump the hot button right away: Is Bush's America 2007 fascist? I have been often scornfully upbraided (I got myself a bit of a reputation) for releasing the f-word at dinner tables in New York, by people who hate Bush and Co quite as much as I do, including, for instance, an editor who recently edited a big book on fascism. Something about fascism proper as a total, centralized violent state seems to be the issue.


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[soothsayer]

1. kakistocracy

On edit (for those who don't know): Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

[endarkenment]

2. Kleptocratic Duopoly. nt.

[Zueda]

3. Clusterf**kracy? n/t

[mmonk]

4. Dictatorship.

Those in power have been proven to be above the law. Protections and guarantees to protect the citizenry from tyranny have been removed. The illusion it is something else is continued through an election process or exercise.

[saltpoint]

5. An oiligarchy.

Driven by early-epoch primates.

[JNelson6563]

6. Oligarchy

Of course.

[Tesha]

7. Plutocracy. (NT)

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

8. low people in high places

[karlrschneider]

9. FUBAR

/not kidding

[gasperc]

10. representative authoratative republic

We are clearly not a democracy, the money from a few special interests mainly corporate lobbyists has enabled a very narrowly supported constituency to control legislative power. These few individuals are very authoratative. This has been cracked but not broken, we are slowly moving back towards at least a representative republic but two things must happen, the elections must be open, transparent and not corrupted and voter participation must go well past 70%. We have two serious problems with the current state of the union in my view, a large portion of eligible voter's still do not vote and the large illegal immigration population, although live and work here, do not vote. The immigrants need to be patriated and legally represented otherwise we face the future described in Children of Men, where immigrants are scapegoated for civilization's failures.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

11. Theocratic Corporatarchy..

Politicians take money from corporate sources, do their bidding and end every speech with "God Bless America".

[BlueJazz]

12. Blind leading the Blind.

[spanone]

13. taxation with very little representation

[H2O Man]

14. "Worse than Watergate"

comes from a column that Dean did for FindLaw, which was reprinted by Salon; an editor at Salon came up with the title, not Dean. In the essay, Dean suggested the potential for impeachment if administration officials had intentionally manipulated intelligence to make a case for war in Iraq. (Salon; 6-11-03)

Dean next heard the phrase on MSNBC's Hardball, during a debate between host Chris Matthews and RNC chairman Ed Gillespie. Matthews said that the administration's exposing Valerie Plame's identity for political purposes was "worse than Watergate." Dean said that, to his surprise, Gillespie did not disagree.

[robcon]

15. Democracy, with Democrats in charge of Congress,

and soon to be in charge of the executive branch.

[leftchick]

16. a kinder gentler fascism

at least for now.

[jmowreader]

17. Broken.

The United States both fits and doesn't fit any of the classic models of dysfunctional government.

There are lots of people, both in and out of government, that would love to turn America into a theocracy. We're not there yet. Same thing with a kakistocracy, an oligarchy, a dictatorship...

But we can all agree that the United States' government is Broken. It doesn't work the way it's supposed to. I don't know if it ever DID work exactly the way it's supposed to, but it's not working at all right now. Let's just call it the GOP Failure Government and be done with it.

We fix it first by RICOing the Republican Party.

[Beelzebud]

18. Corporate Fascism

[Romulox]

19. Two family monarchy