
% EVERYTHING WRONG WITH DEMOCRACY.  CAPITALISM IS REGULATED.  GOVERNMENT
% IS RUN BY ITS PEOPLE.  [MISSING A LOT AT THE END]

Senator Patricia Wye had been a fixture on the Washington scene for
decades, first as a dutiful wife and more recently as a power broker
in her own right.  Seated comfortably by the fireplace in the Senate
Reading Room, she looked about her as the commerical break ran.  The
chair was positioned precisely; the coffee cup was filled to exactly
the correct level; an edge of the ornate rug could just be seen on the
video monitor.  She waited until the light came on before smiling, to
make this act seem more spontaneous.  As she fell easily into a
familiar patter with Ecks, the cameraman noted that her frosted blond
coiffure hadn't changed in twenty years.

Ecks: "Senator, what do you say to Captain Mercuriou?"

Wye: "Only that this country is run by its people, through their
elected representatives, and the capitalists do not own everything.
If anything, it's the other way around -- capitalism is chosen by the
people and regulated by the government."

Mercuriou: "Oh, it's regulated, all right.  You've got laws to
regulate factories, you've got laws to regulate fisheries, you've got
laws to regulate farmers.  If you chose decent leaders to begin with,
you wouldn't need all those laws!"

Wye: "Well, we have to have laws, Captain."

Mercuriou: "Why?  I'll tell you why.  Because otherwise you'll have
two factory owners build on the same river.  One will be clean and
safe; the other one will just dump his waste into the nearest pond.
The first one will go out of business in a year, and the second one
will retire at forty laughing 'Ha ha ha, you can't _com_-_pe_-_te_!'"

Wye: "And we don't allow that, captain!  We allow free markets and
free enterprise because they are beneficial to society, but we also
need laws to protect the environment and ensure a level playing field,
so that good corporate citizens are not victimized by abusers.  Would
you have us abandon the Clean Air Act, or the Clear Water Act?  We
have food stamps because we're not willing to let people starve!  We
have social security and Medicare because we're not willing to put the
elderly out on the streets!"

Mercuriou: "And who pays for it all?  More taxes?  Or just run it all
up on the national credit card?  How about a magician pulling a
kerchief out of his fist -- can he do it with cash?"

Wye: "We must control spending, but not by getting rid of programs
that serve the truly needy."

Mercuriou: "Bottom line -- if America is so great and so wonderful,
why do we need all these government programs?"

Wye: "Because these government programs help make our society great!
We allow free enterprise, we allow competition, we allow people to
earn a reward from their labor, but we also have programs in place to
achieve a clean environment, a safe food supply, reliable
transportation, a minimal social support system.  Women and minorities
need protection against discriminatory labor practices, and children
deserve a quality education.  These decisions are made through a
cooperative political process."

Mercuriou: "Your decisions are made on a TV game show, vastly
elaborate, with stages all over the country, and Oh My God so
expensive!  You've got to be flying everywhere, giving speeches,
buses, banners, ballons, all kinds of buttons and bumper stickers!  It
costs huuuuge amounts of money to play, the judges watch everything on
TV, and they have an average IQ of 100!  This is what your government
has been since the invention of television!  It's got troops all over
God's creation, enough national debt to last a half century, the
biggest prision state in the world, a wall across its southern border,
and now it's out to enslave the world under globalization!  I call it
a Game Show Government, and it's a disaster of truly Biblical
proportions!"

Wye: "We're governed by the Constitution..."

Mercuriou: "You're governed by a TV Game Show!"

Wye firmly grabbed her head, re-adjusted her hair, then laughed.

Wye: "So now you're against democracy..."

Mercuriou: "You're damn right I'm against democracy!  It's one of the
most tyrannical political philosophies ever!  It's premise is that one
group of people are somehow entitled to rule over everyone else just
because there's more of them!"

Wye: "The people choose their own own leaders!"

Mercuriou laughed, then sneered.

Mercuriou: "Which people, Senator, surely not all the people!"

Wye: "Yes, The People!"

Mercuriou: "What about the two million people you've got locked up in
your jail cells, the largest prison system in the world?  Do they
choose their own leaders?"

Wye: "We have a participatory democracy, Captain!  The people can
petition their government to change the laws, and if enough people
support them, the laws _will_ change!"

Mercuriou: "You didn't say the people could _participate_!  You said
the people could _choose_their_own_leaders_, but in fact only the
majority get to _choose_their_own_leaders_; they do it on a TV Game
Show; everyone else participates, and loses!  Hell, I'll take
'participatory government' any day!  You participate, and I'll make
all the decisions!  I'll even have my own TV Game Show!  What do you
say?"

Wye: "Well, that would be a dictatorship, Captain, but I suppose
that's what you've had in mind all along.  The bottom line is that
people of this planet have decided on democracy, captain, we're not
going back!"

Mercuriou: "I don't care.  It's not the bottom line; not for me.  I
won't accept it.  None of us should.  The majority care about three
things: getting rich, getting tough, and getting laid!  They aren't
entitled to rule everyone else's lives!  Nobody has that right!"

Wye: "Democracy is _responsive_ to its people; we have the ability to
change!"

Mercuriou: "Oh, the communists talked about change too, senator.  The
dictatorship of the proletariat was just going to wither away and
leave us with some utopian socialist future.  I'll bet it came as one
hell of a shock to a whole lot of people in Russia when it finally
dawned on them that communism was going to remembered for
_exactly_what_it_was_ and not some fantasy future that never happened!
You can talk change all you want; democracy is going to be remembered
for _exactly_what_we_live_in_today_... no fantasy futures allowed!"
