American Democracy Is In Deep Rot — And The Political Elite Like It That Way

The United States of America, once heralded as a beacon of democracy, now stands as a grotesque parody of itself. The so-called "land of the free" is shackled by partisan warfare and dysfunction so severe, that it’s hard to believe this is the same nation that once led the world.

Today, America's democracy isn't just in crisis—it’s crumbling under the weight of ideological brinkmanship, apathy, and systemic rot. If this is the standard for the "leader of the free world," then the world is in a lot of trouble.

Let’s start with the issue of illegal immigration, a glaring symbol of the breakdown of American governance. Under President Joe Biden, the nation has seen over 8 million migrant encounters, with more than 6.7 million of those at the Southwest border. And the real kicker? Over 1.7 million “gotaways”—illegal immigrants who managed to evade the Border Patrol and slip into the interior of the United States (US), unchecked and unvetted. The situation is an open wound on the country’s security, yet, nothing has been done by the political elite in Washington, DC to address it.

When the Democrats took control of the White House in 2020, they swiftly unravelled most of Trump’s border policies, abandoning even the semblance of control. The result was a total collapse of border security, and the American people were left holding the bag.

An overwhelming majority of Americans, 78 per cent to be precise, agree this is a "crisis" or "major problem"—but that doesn’t matter to the political elite. They're too busy squabbling over their next move in the ideological chess game to address what’s clearly one of the most pressing issues facing the country.

And don't expect any change from the Republicans. They've staked their entire identity on an ideological purity that leaves Americans paying the price. Take their stance on gun control—another area where political ideology trumps common sense. The US sees more than 600 mass shootings annually—almost two per day—and yet the Republicans stubbornly refuse to address the epidemic. Even after a gunman shot at Donald Trump during his campaign, nearly killing him, the party did nothing.

It’s clear now that the Republican establishment would rather see more bodies piled up than risk angering their gun lobby benefactors. It’s not just incompetence; it’s wilful negligence of the most basic duty of any government: protecting its citizens.

The media is equally corrupt. The so-called "liberal" press has turned into a propaganda arm for the Democratic Party. Biden’s mental decline was painfully obvious for at least two years, but the likes of CNN and MSNBC turned a blind eye, mocking anyone who dared to bring it up, even those few from within the Democratic establishment. They only acknowledged the issue when it became impossible to ignore—after Biden’s disastrous performance in the 2024 debate with Trump, who is himself increasingly incoherent.

But then, when he won, the flag-bearer of the liberal media that demonised Trump for years, comparing him to Hitler, rushed to pay homage to him at Mar-a-Lago. The hypocrisy stinks to high heaven, and the American public isn’t blind to it.

The same members of the US intelligence community who once dismissed Hunter Biden's incriminating laptop as "Russian disinformation" are now accusing President-elect Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, former Democratic lawmaker Tulsi Gabbard, of having "sympathy for dictators" like Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. This comes in the same week that Biden pardoned his son for the very crimes previously dismissed as disinformation, yet there’s barely a whisper of accountability.

The liberal media, which has relentlessly targeted Gabbard from the start—branding her a Russian asset and amplifying Hillary Clinton's baseless accusations—remains conspicuously silent. The hypocrisy is glaring but predictably ignored.

Then there’s the farce that is the US election system. The 2020 election was a mess—replete with claims of voter fraud and the chaos of mail-in ballots.

Mail-in voting has made a mockery of the electoral process. In a system where voters can submit their ballots weeks in advance, how can anyone reasonably claim the results are legitimate? Ballots are collected from unobserved, unsupervised drop boxes and mailed in, leaving them ripe for alteration, tampering, and coercion.

Moreover, in states like California, vote harvesting—under the guise of "vote trafficking"—allows third-party operatives to pick up ballots and deliver them to election officials, often with little oversight. This is not democracy. This is a system tailor-made for manipulation. If America truly cares about election integrity, why is it that they continue to allow this farce to persist?

The problem isn’t just the fraud potential; it’s the sheer absurdity of the system itself. There is no uniform standard for voting in the United States. Elections start on different dates across the country. Voter IDs are optional in large states like California, where large populations of illegal immigrants live, opening the door to further manipulation.

It’s baffling that the US—supposedly the world leader in technology—can’t implement a basic, secure voting system. Instead, it’s a chaotic mess, designed to benefit the political elites rather than the people.

The 2024 elections were decided weeks ago, with Donald Trump already announcing his cabinet picks, yet some states are still "counting" the votes. A country that prides itself on being the world’s superpower can’t even conduct a simple, fair election on time. This is not a democracy; it’s a farce, a circus of manipulation and incompetence. America’s political system has devolved into a chaotic, self-serving mess that only benefits the people at the top.

So, is this the model for democracy the world should follow? Absolutely not. If America’s democracy is anything to go by, the rest of the world should be very wary. It’s a system that’s so fractured, so riddled with corruption, that it can no longer claim to represent the will of the people. The political elite—both Democrats and Republicans—are more interested in their own power than in serving the people. The media, which should hold them accountable, is too busy running cover for them. And the election system? It’s a joke.

The United States may still be a superpower, but its democracy is broken. It’s time the world stopped pretending otherwise.