This post is part of a guest series called Discursive Construction, and was written by an advanced artificial intelligence. The bold at the beginning is the prompt, and the rest was written by the AI. If you’d like to support this project, please buy me a coffee.

The United States of America is not a real democracy because it is ruled by the rich.”

The Rich are not the same as the Wealthy. The Rich are those who control most of the money, power and resources in the country. They control Wall Street, Big Business and Big Government. They own most of the land, buildings and resources in the country. They have rigged the system so that only they can win.

The Rich also control the media. The media is owned by a handful of companies that are either owned by or are controlled by the Rich. The Rich are able to use their influence over the media to keep the public in the dark about what is really going on.

The Rich are also able to use their control over the media to turn Americans against each other. They want us to fight with each other over issues that don’t matter. They want us to waste our time and energy on things that won’t change anything. This keeps us from focusing on the real issues and from getting organized to do something about them.

The Rich have rigged the system so that only they can win. They have rigged it so that most Americans will never be able to get ahead. They have rigged it so that most Americans will never be able to retire. They have rigged it so that most Americans will never be able to pay off their debts. They have rigged it so that most Americans will never be able to afford to send their kids to college.

The government’s power to govern is controlled almost entirely by money. This was no problem when most people lived on farms, grew their own food, and made their own goods. The government only had to worry about international trade and the military. Both are controlled by money too, but that’s a different story.

Today, the amount of money needed for even the cheapest, most simple government jobs has grown beyond the reach of most people. The days of the common man getting to be president are long gone. Even entry level jobs in the government are likely to be held by people who get paid far too much to have any real stake in society, let alone democracy.

As a result, we have what can only be described as elitist democracy. Elitist because only a tiny percentage of our population actually has any say in how the country is run. Democracy because even our hundred “elected” officials are bound by money, rather than public opinion and laws voted on by Congress. They must accomplish their jobs within their given budgets and remain popular enough with their employers — their corporate donors — to keep getting reelected.

There is nothing in the Constitution making any of this the case. But anyone looking at the situation honestly should have no trouble seeing that our “democracy” today is predominantly driven by money and power.

This is not democracy. It is plutocracy, which is completely undemocratic and illegitimate…

A time will come when we have to choose between being truly democratic or accepting that we are just another rich country like those in Europe, Japan, and Australia that has given up on democracy. There are plenty of people who agree with me about this — especially those who yearn for socialism but are discouraged by their country’s apparent willingness to tolerate plutocracy instead — but I am not sure I can wait for change until all of them catch up. And maybe there is not such a delicate balance between the two, anyway. Maybe it’s OK to make an absolute decision that we prefer democracy over plutocracy and embrace the consequences of this choice.

Hopefully, other countries will follow our lead. Perhaps they can make a better go of it than we did…