Some links about politics and democracy in the United States.
Democracy for Realist by Christopher H. Achen & Larry M. Bartels
Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government
Why almost everything you think about democracy is wrong.
Even voters who pay close attention to politics are prone - in
fact, more prone - to biased or blinkered decision-making. The
reason is simple: Most people make political decisions on the
basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not an honest
examination of reality.
...
So much of politics, not surprisingly, turns out to be about
expressive behavior rather than instrumental behavior - in other
words, people making decisions based on momentary feeling and not
on some sound understanding of how those decisions will improve or
hurt their life.
...
I think it's hard to see how the public as a whole would steer
the country in any particular direction. Usually when we think
about public input, we think about public input in response to
particular kinds of choices that have been framed by political
elites of one kind or the other, whether they're party leaders or
elected officials.
...
History clearly demonstrates that democracies need parties to
organize and simplify the political world. But parties don't make
the fundamental problems of democratic control disappear; they
just submerge them more or less successfully. When professional
politicians are reasonably enlightened and skillful and the rules
and political culture let them do their job, democracy will usually
work pretty well. When not, not.
...
If you think about democracy in the terms we prefer, you might say
the biggest limitation at the moment is that we don't know how to
incorporate the role of political elites in a constructive way into
the governing process or to somehow make it possible to ensure that
they're working on behalf of the interests of ordinary people.
...
It seems clear to us that a lot of the actual ways in which people
of ordinary education or ordinary means or just not much power,
the ways in which they are disadvantaged are often occurring at
the level of policymaking rather than at the level of elections
themselves. The financial sector, for instance, is having a lot
of policy success in Washington, in ways that ordinary people, if
they really understood what was happening, would not approve. But
they don't follow it closely enough, they don't understand,
and the policy process is tilted toward moneyed interests that
ordinary people have no chance.
My conscience could't take it anymore. "The hypocrisy from both sides is staggering."
Today, most lobbyists are engaged in a system of bribery but it's
the legal kind, the kind that runs rampant in the corridors of
Washington. It's a system of sycophantic elected leaders expecting
a campaign cash flow, and in return, industry, interest groups,
and big labor are rewarded with what they want: legislation and
rules that favor their constituencies.
...
Know this: Lobbyists are not bad people. They're simply doing
their jobs, and those jobs are not only legal but protected by the
First Amendment. The political left loves to shit all over lobbyists,
but they dial for dollars just like their Republican brethren. And
as for the political right? Well, at least they make no bones about
paying to play. It's "free speech by God. The Supreme Court
makes it so!"
But Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, a liberal who voted for Hillary Clinton, believes Mueller's appointment will help Trump - not bring his downfall like so many Democrats want.
Donald Trump's disregard for the truth is something more sinister than ordinary lying.
As the Princeton University philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt
put it in a famous essay, to lie presumes a kind of awareness
of and interest in the truth - and the goal is to convince the
audience that the false thing you are saying is in fact true. Trump,
more often than not, isn't interested in convincing anyone of
anything. He's a bullshitter who simply doesn't care.
...
When Trump says something like he's just learned that Barack
Obama ordered his phones wiretapped, he's not really trying
to persuade people that this is true. It's a test to see who
around him will debase themselves to repeat it blindly. There's
no greater demonstration of devotion.