Kwasi Konadu

citizens

Democracy and its discontents

EssaysKwasi KonaduComment

My argument is that the United States, or its forerunner colonies, was never a democracy nor can it become one for this reason: if democracy is a “government by the people,” where sovereign power is vested in “the people” who exercise power directly or by elected official,” that system of governance requires rational people and most of the 330 million people in the United States are irrational, including their elected officials. By rational, I mean a person or people able to think clearly, sensibly, and logically. The implication is that it doesn’t matter who becomes the president, nor which party is in power, for there’s a feedback loop where incoming regimes usually do their best to eviscerate the body of work belonging to the previous administration, regardless if that some of that work benefits “the people.”