US is becoming an oligarchy

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump talks to reporters as he arrives in Laredo, Texas July 23, 2015.[Photo/Agencies]

Next year will see the presidential election in the US. All the candidates and potential candidates are campaigning for the nomination of their party in the primary elections right now. As more candidates, particularly the Republican, are either billionaires or backed by big money, people have started to describe the American political system an oligarchy now, a term used only to characterize Third World governments in the past.

First, former US president Jimmy Carter said in a radio interview with Thom Hartmann on July 29, "Now it is an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president.  And the same thing applies to governors and US Senators and Congress members."

Newt Gingrich, former Republic speaker, and Presidential Candidate in 2012, who got an estimated contribution of $20 million from billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife, began to denounce the state of election finance. " I do not think the founding fathers intended for the US to be an oligarchy," he said, " You begin to have billionaires who get together, who think that somehow they got the divine right to tell the country ought to be, which is, I think, dangerous."

Bernie Sanders, current presidential candidate, said on his campaign trail that the campaign finance system amounts to legalized bribery.

In the eyes of many people in China and in other parts of the world, US is the standard bearer of democracy. It is always the US that picks on other countries' political system or election in the name of democracy. Other country does not even have the qualification to pick on the US. 

Living in the US for close to 30 years, I was never convinced that the US was a democracy in the real meaning of the term. As a graduate student in politics, I debated with my professors and classmates about what democracy ought to be. The thing bothered me the most was that money played such a big role in the elections. It is always the rich or those who is backed by the rich who get elected. When money is the most critical thing in deciding the outcome of an election, how could that be democracy?   To me, American democracy is a game among the rich and powerful. The common people have been mostly onlookers of the game. My American professors and my American classmates were never able to convince me that the US was a democracy. I am sure that I never was able to convince any of them that the US was not a democracy either.

Most people in the world do not know the spoil system in the US. Those who contribute the money to an election, get the spoil when the candidates they supported get elected. Ruth Morgenthau, my beloved former professor, told me that she and her husband raised more than one million dollar for Jim Carter's campaign in 1976. When Carter got elected, she was rewarded by President Carter. She could choose any ambassadorship she wanted. Because her husband did not want to leave the US, she chose to be U.S. representative to the United Nations.    

Another important reason that makes me hesitate to accept the US as a democracy is the extreme gap between the rich and poor in the US. By sheer accident, I was able to see how the rich and poor live in the US. As a graduate student living in a poor neighborhood in Burlington, Vermont, I saw the poor illiterate Americans in Northern Burlington, who were so poor that they did not even have hope in their life. When I moved to Boston, where my son was attending one of the most prominent primary schools in the US with a scholarship, I was also able to see how the rich and powerful live. The two groups are simply not from the same world.

I do not believe that when the top zero one percent of the country own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent could be a real democracy. I am glad to see more powerful people come to recognize that something is wrong with American democracy. If nothing else, this recognition alone makes the next year's presidential election significant.

The author is guest professor of Hebei University and professor of Warren Wilson College.