this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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If the rich people control everything then it would be normal to put the spotlight on each one of them once in a while just for society to know who holds the power. Instead newspapers gossip about movie stars and a small group of rich people. That's more than smartness.
Ain't no "If". There is no need for the people to know who holds the power if they are perfectly capable of maintaining power without the spotlight, which they are. Being in 'the spotlight' would only hurt them because then people would know who to blame.
It's only the ignorant jackasses like Trump and Musk who gained their power by luck who brag about their power, the rest are cunning enough to know better.
I meant it differently. In a democracy, the entire population holds the power. Usually the population would want to know who to blame.
In the U.S. we supposedly have a 'Representative Democracy', yet the 'representatives' that keep getting elected are more concerned with what the corporations that 'lobby' them want. I agree, the population does want to know who to blame, but like I said the people in charge (the rich) are cunning enough to let idiot politicians be the scapegoats. Even the politicians are rarely face any consequences. If they happen to represent a constituency that is actually paying attention, they might not get reelected, but that is the exception not the rule here.
Even in some cases where people pay attention, a lot of people have been brainwashed by centuries of propaganda that the mega-rich are good and healthy for a society, and that business interests are more important than human interest, so people commonly vote against their own best interest.
US government is a democratic republic. In other words, a republic that incorporates some democratic concepts and procedures.
But it is not a democracy.
The U.S Government is a Democratic Republic, which is a type of Representative Democracy, which is a type of democracy.
In theory this has advantages over a 'pure/direct' Democracy- for example even if 51% of the people voted to ignore the bill of rights, that wouldn't be legal. You would have to amend the constitution to achieve that- which is a lot harder to do than simply getting 51% of the popular vote. In a Direct democracy it would be easier for a majority group to disenfranchise a minority group.
If the US. was ran they way it's supposed to be, we would be a democracy because the government exists to enact the will of the people.
The problem is that our representatives no longer represent us (if they ever really did), so that makes it decidedly less than democratic. That's why I said we were 'supposedly' a Representative Democracy. We are in name only.
The beliefs of the poorest 90% of the population have zero impact on the outcome of public policy debates. We do not live in a democracy.
Well yeah man who do you think owns the spotlights?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Rich people. That's why they are not just smart and stay out of the Limelight. They make the Limelight shine somewhere else.
It's an important distinction because it doesn't make the Limelight appear to be an objective source of truth.