What you basically got is the remainin' constitutional skeleton or the hollow shell of a democratic system left, but no meat left on its bones. In other words, you still got the parties, you got the elections, you got representatives after the election, but they ain't actually servin' you. They're servin' the big oligarchy of the most wealthy interests that fund their campaigns, own the mass media...the business and banking community. They go through the motions of havin' elections, but the result is basically fixed, regardless which party wins. If Blair took the UK into the Iraq War, well, so would the Tories have done if they'd been in office at the time....despite massive public opposition. So, either way yer public would get a party in office whose real purpose was to pursue a policy NOT in the interests of most of the public, and there wasn't a damned thing the public could do about it, was there?

To have a true democracy, the seated representatives must be truly responsive to the public that elected them....and they are not as things stand now. They're puppets in service of the Oligarchy that runs the finances. The very few who are exceptions to that and have the courage to break ranks and talk about what's happening are either ignored or made fun of by the mass media, because they are dangerous to oligarchic interests, so the media make sure that the public either don't hear about them...or hear about them in a way that trivializes them and makes them appear "wacky" (therefore not to be taken seriously).

Our traditional constitutions and enshrined civil rights from the last few hundred years of social tradition in the West cannot protect us from modern seated representatives who simply don't have the guts or the will or the idealism to stand up for the original purposes of those constitutions.

If all they're really in it for is to win their seat, then nothing is going to change. They're playing the political game and that's all....they're caught up in the game for its own superficial purposes, but not for a higher purpose. To win the game merely means to win at the polls. That does not create or maintain a democracry. It sets up an empty procedural shell that still sort of looks like a democracy, still goes through the outward motions...but that does not embody the ideals or higher motivations or altruistic sense of conscience out of which a true democracy arises.

- Chongo