When the Founding Fathers built the American Republic, they did not choose the messy, participatory democracy of Athens. They chose the Roman Republic — a system that collapsed into corruption, civil wars, and eventually empire. They feared the people more than they feared kings. And now, we are living the consequences.
Note: Although I write primarily from the American perspective, this analysis applies equally to the European Union and the broader Western world. The same systemic flaws — oligarchy masked as democracy, corporate domination, political decay — plague every corner of what we call the “free world.”
A Tale of Two Systems — Athens vs Rome
Around 509 BC, two distinct models of government emerged. In Athens, Cleisthenes overthrew oligarchic rulers and introduced a system based on broader participation, direct democracy, and citizen engagement. Imperfect, yes — but revolutionary in its distribution of power beyond aristocratic families.
Meanwhile, in Rome, the monarchy was expelled, but instead of real democracy, Rome institutionalized oligarchy. Bodies like the Comitia Centuriata and Concilium Plebis existed — but true power remained with the Senate, a fortress of aristocratic dominance.
Athenian democracy fell to external conquest at the hands of Philip II of Macedonia. The Roman Republic rotted from within — corruption, elite struggles, civil wars-until it collapsed into dictatorship and empire.
The American Founding — Choosing the Roman Model
Something profoundly troubling occurred between 1776 and 1787.
In 1776, America’s vision was daring and radical — boldly articulated in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, who passionately believed in democracy, equality, and universal human rights. Jefferson envisioned a nation shaped by Athenian ideals: a government where power belonged openly and unequivocally to the citizens themselves.
Yet, just eleven years later, behind closed doors in Philadelphia, that revolutionary ideal was quietly buried. Jefferson — the brilliant mind behind America’s democratic promise — was thousands of miles away in France, serving as Minister. In his absence, a different cadre of men — James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and their allies — seized the moment and crafted an entirely different document in secrecy.
This new document — the Constitution — bore little resemblance to the democratic spirit of the Declaration. Instead of Athens, it embraced Rome: a calculated oligarchic structure meticulously designed to limit popular influence. Senators were not directly elected. Presidents were chosen through an obscure Electoral College. Judges held lifetime appointments, shielded from public accountability. Every detail seemed engineered to contain the very democracy Jefferson had championed.
James Madison himself, in Federalist №10, openly admitted the system would allow elite rule — justified by a deep fear of “the tyranny of the majority. “ To Madison and his peers, popular democracy was seen not as a solution but as a danger, a gateway to instability, mob rule, and chaos.
Although there was no real proof that a regulated democracy would necessarily collapse into violence, they fixated on the chaos of internal uprisings like Shays’ Rebellion and later retroactively cited the French Revolution — ironically still years away when they wrote the Constitution — to justify their fears.
But they fundamentally misunderstood the nature of mob violence.
Mobs erupt when people are powerless — not when they are empowered.
In Athens, where citizens had real, institutionalized power, mob violence was virtually unknown.
By constructing layers of representation and insulation from the people, the Founders planted the seeds for the instability they had hoped to avoid. They built a fortress against democracy — and in doing so, quietly guaranteed the concentration of power into fewer and fewer hands.
How could such a dramatic philosophical shift occur? Was it cautious pragmatism — or something darker? Was Jefferson’s absence merely coincidental, or a convenient orchestration?
The Bill of Rights, grudgingly added in 1791 under immense pressure from Anti-Federalists, revealed the truth: something was fundamentally wrong with the original Constitution. It was a corrective measure — an attempt to rebalance a document that had quietly entrenched elite rule over ordinary citizens.
Flawed From the Beginning — The Rise of the Power Elite
It is crucial to understand that we are not facing a mere “personnel problem” where better leaders might somehow save the republic.
We are facing a systemic problem: a Constitution flawed by design, built on fear of the people, and structured to inevitably empower the worst among us.
The United States was never a democracy. It was a republic by design, created to empower elites.
In Century of the Self, Adam Curtis reveals how public opinion was engineered to maintain elite control. InAmerican Exception: Empire and the Deep State,Aaron Good shows how a global empire evolved, controlled not by voters but by hidden structures. In The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills details how business, politics, and the military merged to dominate American life.
Representation was a necessity in a world of horses and handwritten letters. Today, in the digital age, that excuse is dead. The republic model has fulfilled its destiny-and repeated the history Rome went through: concentration of power, erosion of freedom, decay from within.
The Collapse of the Illusion
Today, America’s and Europe’s political systems resemble a chaotic theater-where petty, short-sighted figures claw their way into unimaginable power.
Clinton. Bush. Obama. Trump. Biden.
Boris Johnson. Angela Merkel. Emmanuel Macron. Ursula von der Leyen.
One cannot help but wonder: how did we allow this?
It is as if we entrusted the fate of nations to political performers — propped up by corporate media, shielded by money, and justified under the sacred text of outdated constitutions.
Corporate media engineers consent.
Lobbyists write the laws.
Whistleblowers are hunted like criminals.
Endless wars feed the military-industrial machine.
The Constitution protects symbols, not freedoms.
It shields oligarchs, not citizens.
It safeguards power, not democracy.
Just as Rome decayed from within, so too does the modern West — slowly, predictably, inevitably.
We produced the most advanced weaponry, the most sophisticated technologies the world has ever seen — only to entrust them to a primitive, antiquated political system, incapable of managing the very civilization it helped create.
The real problem is not technology. It is the system of governance itself. Until we change the way we govern, no innovation will save us. To build a better future, we do not need more dazzling technologies. What we need is a new way to manage what we already have.
It is not technology that lags behind.
It is politics.
One-Man Rule: A Structural Madness
The real tragedy is deeper than corrupt individuals. It lies in the absurd expectation that one man — one fragile human being — can lead an entire government across dozens of complex fields. It is true that governments have ministers and secretaries tasked with specific areas — foreign policy, education, health, agriculture. But these secretaries are not chosen for independent expertise or public service. They are appointed by the president precisely because they are politically loyal to him. Their primary job is not to serve the sector they oversee — it is to serve the man who appointed them. Under this structure, one man’s ideology, ignorance, or whim defines the entire apparatus of state. Secretaries do not pursue independently studied agendas. They are not champions of their fields. They are merely extensions of the ruler’s will — echo chambers rather than brakes on bad decisions.
Thus, the idea that there is any real separation of executive power is an illusion. All executive functions — war, (now-also) taxes, education, environment, healthcare — are ultimately controlled by the political needs and moods of one person. It is structurally impossible for one person, even the best among us, to manage such vast complexity responsibly. And inevitably, the position attracts not the wise and the humble, but the ambitious, the self-absorbed, and the reckless — those willing to seize immense personal power.
A sane system would never entrust the fate of a nation to a single individual. It would divide executive power among independently elected experts, each directly accountable to the people for their domain. Until we abandon the childish myth of the “one-man leader,” democracy will continue to be a theater of vanity, incompetence, and collapse.
The Hypocrisy of Power
While we criticize and mock China and Russia for their authoritarianism, we refuse to look honestly at our own plate. The West loves to preach liberty and democracy, but in practice, much of its power has long operated behind closed doors. The real rulers are not the elected officials we see on television, but the entrenched bureaucracies, intelligence agencies, corporate lobbies, business magnates, and foreign influence networks that together form the Deep State — the unelected, unaccountable machinery that steers policy regardless of who occupies the White House or Congress.
This hidden power is not theoretical; it is deeply woven into America’s history. Even during the country’s so-called “finest hour” in the first half of the twentieth century — when corrupt monarchies and fascist regimes dominated Europe — America, despite appearing morally superior, was already compromised. Powerful elites like the Rockefellers, the Morgans, and the Carnegies amassed vast fortunes by exploiting labor, crushing unions, and bending politics to their will, all while public rhetoric continued to speak of liberty and democracy. Prescott Bush — the grandfather of a future president — helped finance the Nazi regime on behalf of powerful New York financial interests.
By the mid-twentieth century, a new layer of hidden power emerged through the intelligence agencies and corporate-backed interventions abroad. In 1953, the CIA, acting on behalf of Western oil interests, overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. In 1954, in Guatemala, the CIA toppled President Jacobo Árbenz to protect the landholdings of the United Fruit Company. These were not isolated incidents; they became a blueprint. Across Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, U.S. interventions toppled democratically elected governments not to promote freedom, but to secure corporate profits and geopolitical dominance.
Today, the betrayal continues — only more insidious. Organizations like AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby, control vast portions of congressional funding and steer American foreign policy in ways that serve not the national interest, but the narrow agendas of client states. Unquestioned support for Israel’s policies, even when they damage America’s global standing, has already begun to backfire, isolating the United States internationally and fueling new resentments across the world. Just as past interventions sowed the seeds of future disasters, so too does this blind allegiance guarantee blowbacks yet to come.
The Deep State’s short-sighted schemes did not secure America’s dominance; they unleashed chaos, terrorism, and rebellion that haunts the world to this day. In Iran, the 1953 coup bred decades of resentment, culminating in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and a regime that sees America as its sworn enemy. In Cuba, the backing of Batista’s dictatorship fueled Castro’s revolution and generations of hostility. In Afghanistan, U.S. training and funding of the Mujahideen birthed the Taliban and led directly to the September 11 attacks.
None of this excuses authoritarianism abroad. But it reveals that Western hypocrisy is structural, embedded in systems that allow unelected actors and foreign lobbies to steer national destinies in secret — shielded from public scrutiny by the facade of elections and “democratic institutions.” In contrast, China’s system — whatever its faults — is actively constructing the world — building railways, ports, and infrastructure across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Not out of altruism — but at least offering investment rather than bombs.
I am not suggesting we copy China’s political system. But we must stop comparing ourselves to others and focus instead on our own deep flaws. A constitutional structure that permits an entrenched Deep State, foreign lobbies, and corporate elites to rule in the shadows will inevitably betray its own people. Without structural change, slogans like “liberty,” “democracy,” and “rights” become mere theater — covering for the same self-serving elite rule the Founders once claimed to resist.
The Collapse of the Illusion
Two fundamental crises now collide. The American constitutional system was flawed from the beginning — but for much of the nation’s history, its weaknesses were masked by the presence of exceptional leaders. Men like Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Eisenhower — whatever their imperfections — possessed enough wisdom, courage, and strategic vision to stabilize the republic.
Today, that second pillar — wise leadership — has crumbled. Modern mass media, by rewarding appearances over substance, charisma over competence, accelerated the decline. Serious, thoughtful leaders are invisible in a system obsessed with spectacle and scandal.
With degrading political leadership and outdated constitutional structures, America (and the European democracies) now stand exposed. The system’s ancient flaws are no longer compensated by greatness. They are magnified by mediocrity. And the republic, hollowed out by design, now collapses by consequence.
The Self-Destructive Trade War
As if internal decay were not enough, America is now accelerating its own downfall with reckless economic policies. A system where a two-century-old Constitution, built for a world of horse-drawn carriages, hands nuclear weapons, global markets, and planetary survival to whoever wins the latest corrupted popularity contest.
The decline of leadership quality is not a random accident. It is the natural result of a broken political system that rewards vanity over wisdom, loyalty over expertise.After Joe Biden’s disastrous presidency-arguably the worst of the century, a man who nearly triggered World War III by needlessly provoking Russia and destabilizing the entire region-we now face Donald Trump once again.
His recent escalation of the trade war-with new tariffs up to 125% on Chinese goods, and massive tariffs against Vietnam, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea-promises only further inflation, recession, and global isolation. While China builds railways and ports, America builds walls and barriers.
Trump calls these tariffs “reciprocal,” but according to multiple analyses, these numbers are not based on real tariff rates but on an arbitrary formula using trade deficits.
The result will be catastrophic:
Prices of basic goods, from phones to food, will skyrocket.
Inflation will worsen-exactly what voters revolted against in 2024.
American exporters will face retaliation abroad.
Global trust in the U.S. economic system, already eroded, will deteriorate further.
Instead of embracing smart reindustrialization strategies like targeted investments and industrial policies-as proposed even modestly under the Biden administration-Trump relies on blunt, self-destructive protectionism.
Trump’s reckless tariffs are not without precedent. In 1930, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act triggered a global trade collapse, deepening the Great Depression and devastating American industry. What was meant to protect American jobs instead strangled international commerce by 60% and fueled economic despair. Today, history risks repeating itself — only this time, the stakes are even higher. Tariffs without a national industrial strategy are not economic policy. They are economic suicide.
But to truly understand why America spiraled into this self-destructive collapse-why leaders chase nationalist fantasies while the real economy rots-we have to look deeper into history.
The roots of America’s collapse were planted not with Trump’s tariffs, but with the silent revolution of 1971.
The Gold Standard Abandonment and the Rise of the Corporate State
The abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 fundamentally reshaped the American economy and political structure in ways the original Constitution could neither foresee nor contain. By severing the dollar from gold, Nixon’s decision unleashed an era of unlimited money creation, where banks and corporations gained direct access to cheap credit on an unprecedented scale.
This easy flow of money, however, was not evenly distributed. Financial elites and multinational corporations, positioned closest to the source of new credit, expanded rapidly, while ordinary citizens were left grappling with rising prices and stagnant wages. Inflation, a natural consequence of this monetary expansion, made domestic production increasingly costly, driving industries to relocate manufacturing to cheaper, often authoritarian, labor markets abroad.
The result was a profound economic hollowing out of the American middle class-a phenomenon the original constitutional framework was utterly unprepared to regulate or resist.
In this new reality, corporations and financial institutions effectively captured both the economy and the political system, using their privileged access to cheap money to entrench their power.
What emerged was not a deliberate conspiracy but an organic convergence of interests among banks, corporations, and political elites-a silent corporate coup enabled by monetary policy.
The Constitution, designed for an era of limited capital and local governance, could not anticipate a globalized credit economy where multinational actors wield more influence than the electorate itself.
Without structural reforms, the marriage of limitless fiat money and corporate lobbying has rendered traditional democratic mechanisms-voting, legislation, representation-largely symbolic, masking a deeper transfer of sovereignty from the people to an unelected financial aristocracy.
Ray Dalio’s Diagnosis Falls Short
Billionaire Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has warned about the dangers facing the world: rising debt, political polarization, great power conflict, and natural disasters. He outlines a grand historical cycle where empires rise and fall, arguing that the United States is merely following this ancient pattern.
But while Dalio’s analysis captures the symptoms, it misses the disease.
The real problem is not some mysterious historical force. It is the political system itself — corrupt, antiquated, and hopelessly misaligned with the modern world. We are not victims of inevitable cycles. We are victims of a Constitution that allowed corporations to hijack democracy — permitting them to finance candidates, lobby for laws, distort priorities, and ultimately govern in their own interests. Corporations seek profit, not the welfare of nations. A system that hands ultimate power to private wealth will never serve the public good.
Dalio warns that tariffs, deglobalization, inflation, and populism are symptoms. And he is right.
But he does not finish the thought.
The cycles Dalio describes — wars, colonizations, crises, even pandemics — were not acts of blind historical forces. They were orchestrated, perpetuated, and exploited by elites throughout history. Since Roman times, it has been the powerful who pushed for colonization, wars, instability, and suffering.
Today is no different. The elite-driven system manufactures collapse after collapse to preserve their dominance. The only cure is structural:
We must change the political system itself.
Not tinker with the symptoms.
Not manage the decline with sophisticated financial strategies.
We must build a new Constitution — organic, participatory, transparent, and resilient.
Otherwise, no amount of clever investing — or historical wisdom — will save us.
A New Possibility — The Spirit Still Lives
And yet-not everything is lost.
There is an American spirit I admire deeply.
A spirit that conquered untamed lands and built new worlds from nothing.
A spirit so inventive, so fresh, so alive.
A spirit that rises in the face of injustice, that demands fairness, that refuses to kneel.
A spirit of the people.
It was never the Constitution that made America great.
It was never the elites.
It was the spirit of ordinary men and women — bold, restless, hungry for freedom-who carried this nation forward.
That spirit still breathes.
It is only waiting.
Today, with technology, we have an opportunity the Founders never imagined. We can build a true democracy — a system of direct participation, transparency, and sovereignty of the people.
We no longer need kings, oligarchs, or corporate masters.
We can rule ourselves.
But if we are to seize that opportunity, we must first confront a deeper truth: The real tragedy has never been just corrupt individuals or flawed institutions. It has been the mentality of the people themselves — the endless yearning for a leader, a savior, someone to carry the burden of freedom for them. Every leader, no matter how noble at first, gathers an elite around him. Every elite, inevitably, governs for itself. As long as constitutions and political systems are designed to channel this childish instinct — to concentrate power in a single figure or a small ruling class — true democracy will remain a dream deferred.
Freedom is not bestowed by leaders. It is claimed by citizens mature enough to govern themselves.
The choice is still ours. But the time is running out. Either we outgrow the need to be led — or we resign ourselves to being ruled.
The spirit still lives. We just have to rise and claim it.
So long as the people’s mentality craves a leader — and so long as the Constitution enshrines that craving into law — they will be ruled, not represented.
For every leader gathers an elite around him; every elite governs for itself. Until citizens abandon the childish desire to be led, until they claim the right to govern themselves directly, freedom will remain a slogan, and oligarchy the true master behind the throne.
In my proposal, outlined in Flawed Democracy, I describe a New Democracy:
Where citizens directly vote on all laws,
Where ministers and secretaries are elected separately by merit and expertise, not party loyalty,
Where the legislative body is chosen by profession and sector, not ideology,
And where transparency, decentralization, and public oversight are embedded at every level.
A system designed not for the 18th century — but for the world we live in today.
The choice is still ours.
But the time is running out.
The spirit still lives.
We just have to rise and claim it.
