Are Politicians Puppets? Who Really Runs the World?
Are Politicians Puppets? Who Really Runs the World?
We vote. We debate. We argue over politicians like they’re the real decision-makers. But are they really in charge? Or are they just well-dressed puppets, reading from a script written by those with real power?
Behind every election, there are corporations, lobbyists, billionaires, and hidden networks pulling the strings. Policies aren’t always shaped by public interest but by those who fund campaigns, control the media, and influence economies.
The question is: Who truly holds the power? The government? The wealthy elite? Tech giants? Intelligence agencies?
And if politicians are just the face of a system much bigger than them, does voting even matter? Or are we just choosing between different masks of the same machine?
Think about it this way, why would funding campaigns matter if the vote wasn’t real? There is no correct answer, because each culture has it’s own power structure, but look at the history of each political system, starting with your own to see how the rules started and each incremental change and shift between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law.
It might help to watch Adam Curtis’ The Century of the Self as a starting point (better yet, Hypernormalization-> Bitter Lake -> Century of the self if you want to go from today to 1920s. Reverse that if you prefer to start earlier).
It would also hell to understand economics as globalization, which is a huge part of the current political climate, is an economic tide (See Thomas Friedman). Milton Friedman (different than Thomas) is really important to current political events, too. I personally like Niall Ferguson and Joel Mokyr as scholars of economic history, but to each their own.
You make an excellent point campaign funding absolutely impacts the democratic process, raising questions about the authenticity of our votes. It's a reminder that power structures often go far beyond what we see on the surface. History shows us how systems evolve and shift, and understanding that, along with how economics like globalization shape politics, is key. Curtis’ work on media manipulation and how it influences public perception is a great resource for seeing how we’ve been conditioned, and I agree that understanding economic history and theorists like Milton Friedman helps put today’s political climate into context. The real challenge is figuring out where the line is between genuine democracy and systems that mainly serve a select few.
Your take on genuine democracy is fair, especially if we’re referring to the US (as per my assumption). According to this Wikipedia article on The Economist Democracy Index:
In 2016, the United States was downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy; its score, which had been declining for some years, crossed the threshold from 8.05 in 2015 to 7.98 in 2016. The report stated that this was caused by myriad factors dating back to at least the late 1960s which have eroded Americans' trust in governmental institutions.
The question we’re facing is, if we make it through Trump’s term(s?) with a functional federal gov’t, how can we begin to return to a full democracy, and is that even possible given the trajectory of our economic system.
You really need to specify what state you’re talking about and when. If you’re talking about a capitalist state, then the answer is the capitalist class runs it. If you’re talking about the US specifically, then I’ll recycle my previous answer:
It’s not wrong to say regulatory capture is a problem, it just doesn’t go far enough. The US government was never not captured by the bourgeoisie, because the US was born of a bourgeois revolution[1]. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
You bring up a critical point, if we’re talking about a capitalist state, it’s hard to deny that the capitalist class holds the reins. The US, as you mentioned, was built on a bourgeois revolution, and the foundational structures, designed by a wealthy, white, land-owning elite, set the stage for the kind of oligarchy we see today. The idea that the system was never intended to represent the working class is key, and it’s something that’s often overlooked. The study you mentioned about the US being an oligarchy rather than a democracy really underscores how deep this issue runs. It’s not just regulatory capture, it’s the very nature of the state being designed to serve the interests of the elite, which we can trace back to its origins.
Dons my tinfoil hat...
Giorgio knows what’s up.
Who’s to say we’re not all just shadows on the wall, right?
