Thread by @Doc_0

From Brexit to the Wall, you can see the political class feels powerful enough to sabotage anything the voters choose. Government shapes the people, while we can do very little to change it. The power to say "no" is a privilege reserved for the elite.

This has always been one of my biggest problem with the notion that democracy guarantees representation and shields against tyranny.

"They can't be tyrants if we can just vote the bums out of office!" I hope no one still believes that.

Sure, you can hold elections and try to replace some of the individual people in government, although they have immense power to shape elections - from changing the rules to buying or bullying blocs of voters. The incumbency rate is an alarm bell we ignored for too long.

Even with clean and vigorous elections, even with term limits, the problem is that as government grows, the number of powerful officials who are entirely shielded from the wrath of voters gets larger, and they have many weapons to defend their interests against the public.

None of this has to be a dark conspiracy. The elite is quite open about what it wants, the beliefs it enforces upon the population. They don't need a lot of secret meetings to coordinate efforts, although they do have some. They mostly talk to each other through op-ed pages.

The simple truth is that Big Government is inherently ANTI-democratic, even when everyone nominally agrees democracy is the best thing ever. The bigger your government gets, the less true control you have over it, and the more interests it develops at the expense of the public.

You'll also notice that the "political elite" includes a lot of powerful people who are not government officials or politicians who run for office. The State inevitably develops powerful private sector allies, people with money and influence who share its interests.

You will never get to vote against those people. You can try sending them a message by refusing to do business with them, but you'll notice that politicized private enterprise is much less worried about that possibility than it used to be.

For too long, we told ourselves ballots were an invincible shield against tyranny, a leash the Leviathan State could never slip. It should now be easy to see that the leash is a manacle and Leviathan holds the other end in its jaws.

Vote all you want, people of America and Europe, but understand that if you vote for anything outside the narrow range your ruling class deems acceptable, they will simply refuse to obey, and you can do little to threaten most of their positions.

When a vote doesn't go their way, they think the fight is just getting started. They will punish the voters for their impudence until they get another vote they like better, at which point they will declare the matter settled forever. They can say "no." You cannot. /end

Addendum: Be advised that if you persist in displeasing your ruling class, they will replace you with a constituency more to their taste. It is now much easier for the political class in most countries to replace their electorates than the reverse.