Will America Survive?

By Yuri Tuvim,

Almost a half century ago the mighty Soviet Union collapsed. Its legacy includes many things, from Sputnik to training Palestinian terrorists.

I strongly believe that by examining the Soviet failure we can learn something of vital importance for us.

There were many reasons for the demise of the Soviet empire, but one cause is often overlooked. As soon as the revolutionaries moved from the battle fields of the civil war into their offices, the seeds of the future collapse were planted. Bureaucracy was formed and started to grow. Stalin understood the potential of the bureaucratic machinery and used it effectively. He was godfather to the Soviet bureaucracy, and his bureaucrats worked efficiently because they were ruthlessly controlled to the point of extermination.

After Stalin’s death bureaucracy flourished. In a few years it acquired enough power to remove Khrushchev, who tried to reform the country by reshuffling and restructuring state and party machinery. Brezhnev never challenged the bureaucracy and allowed it to grow unchecked. The major achievement of the Soviet system was total alienation of the individual from the decision-making process, and from any participation in the life of country.

The USSR was like a pyramid where all the decisions were made on the top and handed down through the party bureaucracy. In such a system there was no place for any initiative by ordinary people. Moreover, any kind of initiative was regarded with suspicion and often was punished. Government ran everything from nuclear power plants to kindergartens.

Over the course of a few decades, this system created a new type of individual. Major traits of this Homo Sovieticus were the welfare mentality and antisocial behavior, the very traits that are now reasons why Russia is in such bad shape.

The USA is not in good shape, either. I am afraid we are losing our way of life. We are becoming more polarized and less involved in the life of our country. Bureaucrats and lawyers are becoming our masters. Rules and regulations are taking the place of common sense. Our congress has a historically low approval rating, but every State of the Union speech by the President solicits numerous applauses from the members of that dysfunctional and bitterly divided body. What is going on in our “leading democracy of the world”? Lawmakers are applauding but people on the street are very far from being optimistic.

The feeling that they are masters of their life is evaporating. Take elections. That process is now more and more guided by money. Incessant TV ads bombard us with primitive sound bites and distortions. Because of that voter participation in the midterm elections is 45% and only 65% for presidential elections. America has the lowest voter participation among democratic countries. This is estrangement, alienation. Soviet people were removed from the political process abruptly and completely; we are removing ourselves voluntarily and slowly, but this is only a quantitative, not a qualitative difference. The end will be the same – collapse. It will only take a longer time. The Soviet Union existed seventy years. It looks to me, that America follows the path of the life of democracies first outlined by the Scottish professor, Tyler in 1887:

A democracy is always temporary in nature: it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over lose fiscal policy which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the words greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about two hundred years. During these two hundred years these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.

All these downward steps of the demise of a democracy have one root: the government. What is the government? Simply, the machinery needed to administer the task and needs of the country.

The government consists of three branches – legislative, executive and judicial. All three have a part in America’s decline but I would like to take the legislative branch first. The most appropriate word to characterize our Congress would be dysfunctional. However, it is dysfunctional only with issues our country is facing. Issues concerning the well being of members of Congress are addressed quite well.

Our lawmakers are excluded from Obamacare which they force on us without even reading its two thousand plus pages. And why bother? Their health care system is not affected. But beyond special health care they have other privileges. Let me list some others:

• Insider trading. Lawmakers are exempt from rules of the Security and Exchange Commission.
• Conflict-of-interest rules do not apply to legislators.
• Freedom of Information Act is also not applicable to them. Actually, their documents are as inaccessible as secret documents of the CIA. However, some of the CIA documents become declassified in time and congressional records never do.
• Whistleblower laws are not applicable to Congress.

It is impossible to catalog all the perks and misdeeds of our Congressmen in this short opinion.

For those of you who would like to know more, I recommend a thoroughly researched book by Peter Schweizer, Throw Them All Out.

I hope this book will prompt you to action if you are concerned about the future of our country. From this book you learn that there is no basic difference between legislators on both sides of the aisle. Corruption, crony capitalism, graft and blatant self-serving are blossoming on both sides. Lawmakers are so absorbed with their own needs they pay less and less attention to the problems of the country. That’s why only 10% of the population has faith in them. Nothing short of a groundswell of public action will be able to return it to a functioning body.

To make our Congress work more productively, we need to diminish the gap between the people and their representatives. Right now, that gap is quite wide and growing. Approval rating of Congress is historically low. The alienation of people from participating in the political process is increasing.

Both major political parties prefer not to notice that. In their lengthy platforms of almost thirty thousand words not a single sentence addresses the dysfunctional operation of Congress. To reverse the alienation and to reduce the role of money in elections is difficult but possible.

I asked dozens of people from all walks of life what they think about the implementation of term limits for members of the Congress. Their response was overwhelmingly positive. Not one person was against it.

So, people are for term limits but their representatives, with a few exceptions, prefer not to notice. This is not responsive Democracy.

In conclusion:

1) Refusing to endorse and implement term limits, politicians reveal that they put their own interests before the needs of people.

2) Any party which proclaims the intention to implement term limits will overwhelmingly win the next election.