Example Of Patriocracy Essay

I think this is not only a fair representation of the current political landscape in the US right now, but it’s extremely accurate. In fact, they even mentioned how politicians are bought and sold, even if it’s underfoot. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, as mentioned in the movie, will probably go down as one of the worst made in the century, behind only not allowing for a recount of Florida votes in 2000. By allowing corporations to virtually become people, should we then charge a sales tax for their purchase of political districts via gerrymandering? Since this decision, the only politicians who stand a real chance, outside of amazing orators such as Elizabeth Warren on the left, or Marco Rubio on the right, is to have tons and tons of money, and corporations, to back your campaign up. It is no longer the true spirit of democracy, it would seem. This paper is too short to really give a proper thesis statement, but hopefully this introduction set the tone.
The director explained well how we got here. He even pinpointed the who, what, when, where, and why. The who is twofold, the lost election of Barry Goldwater, and the rise of C-Span and Newt Gingrich. This happened, I believe, in the late 60’s or early 70’s, in congress, Newt wanted to exploit a conservative agenda completely devoid of an attempt to negotiate for the other side. This created the spiral downward for congress, and as several commentators in this movie suggested, unless there is major reform in the way congress members address each other and reach out to communicate common goals, it will continue to sink into what will be the first branch of this government to completely collapse. With it’s approval numbers dwindling now near the single digits, a record low, it may not come back, and may be completely unfixable because of its dysfunction, according to Bob Schiefer and the former Republican congress member from Wyoming (who was quite a spitfire).
The last quarter of the movie was about getting out, and it contained several steps, including campaign reform, transparency, etc. Though they were all valid points, my own personal fear is that it may just be too late for congress. No matter what party the POTUS belongs to, the congress is immediately up in arms in an offensive against them.
Perhaps the most interesting and new information we got from this film was the genuine role that media plays in forming our political opinions. Having one of the nation’s leading Journalism professors go through two different shows step by step, and explaining how each posits their own subjective views, in order to pander to their audiences. It seems that authentic reporting has, in fact, taking a back seat to our commentators or entertainers. It was interesting that due credit was given to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and not the Rachel Maddow’s or Bill O’Reilly’s (not that I disagree). It was shocking to a South Carolian lose an election, simply based on the fact that he didn’t hate our President, as Glenn Beck had apparently suggested we do. Very interesting film overall.