Democracy? Too much trouble!

"Polarized primary voters shouldn't be allowed to define the choices in American politics."

"...the less beholden politicians are to grassroots activists, the better they will represent voters as a whole."

"Senior administration officials have acknowledged... that they are considering alternatives other than democracy in Iraq."

These quotes, collected by David Sirota over at Worldwide Sawdust, show politicians of both the Democratic and Republican leadership demonstrating their distaste for democracy. You see, when the people get involved, it just screws things up for them. They're professionals; they've worked things out for us already. No need to get too involved and think for yourself; it just gets messy.

Sirota sees the positive side of these quotes: They're scared of us, and with good reason. Blogs, YouTube, MySpace... these all allow We The People to bypass the middlemen. When politicians speak, the people reply immediately and unedited. When they mis-speak, it gets posted even quicker (who hasn't yet seen George Allen's 'Macaca' video?).

Howard Wolfson, a political consultant, says that YouTube and the like, "create more accountability and more democratization of information in the process." On the other side, there's this:

"Matthew Dowd ... looks at the YouTube-ization of politics, and sees the 'death of spontaneity. It's taken some richness out of the political discourse...There's no, 'Is this the right thing for political discourse?' It's just there.'"

Do you want to decide what issues matter to you, or do you want the professionals to decide? That's really what this about. They like to set the agenda, and when we disagree about the priorities, they get upset.

As Sirota put it, "Pundits and politicians in Washington are publicly telling American voters that we do not matter, and that they believe we should not matter." Let's really make the professional politicians work for their votes... get involved, write letters, write blogs, post videos, share information, and scare the pants off these assholes, left and right.

Tags: politics, democracy, Republican, Democrat, politicians, YouTube, MySpace, blogging, we the people