The US is Good at Weapons and Bad at Democracy

The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'American flag in the shape of a machine gun.'

The US is the world's biggest arms dealer. According to the Intercept, "In Biden’s first full fiscal year as president, weapons sales from the United States to other countries reached $206 billion, according to the State Department’s annual tally." This staggering figure includes weapons sales to 57% of the world's autocracies. Our politicians praise democracy at every opportunity, but militarily support regimes that are anything but democratic.

Relying on a classification system called Regimes of the World, the Intercept piece above explained how a country's status as democratic or autocratic was determined:

The system classifies regimes into four categories: closed autocracy, electoral autocracy, electoral democracy, and liberal democracy. For a country to be classified as a democracy, it must have multiparty elections and political freedoms that make those elections meaningful. According to this methodology, the dividing line between democracies and autocracies is whether a country's leaders are accountable to their citizens through free and fair elections.

The question of democracy

Regimes of the World categorizes the US as a liberal democracy. This seems off to me because the US appears not to meet the standards for inclusion into this group. We don't have multiparty elections. Instead, we have a single party that calls all the shots. The uniparty, wearing red or blue hats depending on the agenda being advanced.

Are our country's leaders accountable to us through free and fair elections? They are not. If they were, Al Gore would have become president after being elected to that office by voters in 2000. And if our elections were fair, there never would never have been a conspiracy involving party officials and mainstream media to prevent Bernie Sanders from running against Donald Trump in 2016.

Maybe Regimes of the World needs a new category for our system. It's like a corporate oligarchy, but one that's beholden to a deep state of appointed military and intelligence officials, with billionaires gallivanting around distorting things. Mainstream media is wholly folded into this regime. People who serve the public interest by leaking the regime's misdeeds are relentlessly prosecuted.

I'm not sure what to call our system, but liberal democracy definitely doesn't fit. Recent years have also convinced me that voting itself is at best of marginal importance. Individual elected officials matter in only the smallest of ways. We've been heading in a bad direction for many years and they always stay the course.

Democratic or not, our regime will likely continue to be the world's biggest arms dealer. Domestically, we've been systematically turning local police into unaccountable soldiers since 9/11. And our civilian population is famously well-armed. Our democracy may be just for show, but our arsenals demonstrate our values.

Read my novels:

Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS and as a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt.
The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.

See my NFTs:

Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.

Wow. Stunning figures when it comes to the arm sales, like the LA Progressive article that explores the complexity and scope of the corrupt arms industry. I wonder what this new category would be to describe what type of system we are. This post reminds me of a conversation between Plato and Socrates I've always somehow kept in the back of my mind.

“Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country?

Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this.

Socrates: How so, Plato?

Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is a sculptor.

Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they have no need to be reminded.

Plato: That is correct.

Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.”

And a big issue is that many of us keep blaming the elites and the control regimes almost as an exclusive focus as to why we're not a democracy anymore. Yet look at how We the People treat each other in society. We further curtail our own freedoms when we don't build the capacity to listen to each other, build meaningful relationships, and have open dialogue with each other about these issues.