Letter in today's NY Times Magazine

I agree with this letter that appeared in today's NY Times Magazine:

What Americans have in mind when they want other countries to be “democratic like we are” is our political system, in which voters get to choose between two corporatized parties, financed by the same moneyed interests that agree on major issues, while elections focus on lesser issues, personalities and smears (Noah Feldman, Oct. 7). Policy options and citizen involvement are minimal. Candidates who stray beyond conventional rhetoric or propose more than cosmetic reforms are quickly relegated to the “extremes.” Voters are obliged to pick the lesser evil and so end up with more evil no matter who wins.

There is a thriving business of interchangeable corporate and government political operatives working to reproduce this system in other lands. Their obvious aim is not to spread actual democracy but to earn their money by setting up compatible, and therefore more easily dominated, outposts of the American empire. The rest of the world got wise to this a long time ago.

Pete Karman

New Haven