The American experiment in democracy has resulted in a state no less authoritarian than those that make no pretense to the name. There is less liberty in America now than in 1789. That America, the America envisioned, and the reality for 150 years, no longer exists.
The democracy in America of the last seventy years is one in which consent of the governed has been manufactured by "opinion leaders," a state/business/media/legal/academic oligarchy that has sought to limit the public's access to information and has massaged the information given to conform public opinion to the oligarchy's interests. The soul of America was changed.
Can it change again? Can America undo the last seventy or so years or is the oligarchy now so powerfully entrenched, is its control so total that the mutated soul of America is now immutable? The soul is mutable. The Edward Snowden revelations show that change is not irreversible. The NSA has been exposed, the oligarchy is on the defensive. There is enough liberty still for that. Change has not come though. Should "yet" be added to that sentence?
