Power in the Political Process
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1. The United States has an elitist system in which those who already have power are the ones who have access to the power of government. Theoretically such power is available to millions of Americans. By voting for their representatives, lobbying lawmakers, encouraging others to vote, promoting causes with the public, and running for office themselves, most Americans can be said to have access. But in reality those with power, based either directly or indirectly on economic power, not only have automatic access, they also control mass communications media and have an influence on political parties that is based on the number of dollars they have to offer rather than the number of votes they possess. In all aspects of the political process--political parties, mass communications, influencing public opinion, influencing voter behavior, and functioning as interest groups--American elites have consistently transformed every part of the process to suit their own needs. By considering each of these aspects of the system it is possible to show how the changes they made created the country's elitist system. Political parties, for example, were originally a way of avoiding monopolies on governmental power. In theory, they allowed the expression of different opinions and meant that people with different views had a chance of getting representation that suited them. The Founders had not liked the idea of political parties because they thought they undermined public consensus b
. . .
t years in school.
The basic idea of democracy that is presented in schools, however, is that the United States has a representative democracy that is responsive to the demands of a great diversity of interests. By voting, the individual citizen makes his or her own interests count. But by teaching conformity at the same time, individual critical opinion is not given much importance. Therefore the manipulation of public opinion is not as difficult as it might seem to be. Welch et al. demonstrate how the mass communications media give the impression of providing an accurate picture of the world while actually simply providing the picture of the world that they think people ought to have. But Americans who are trained to believe that they need to be "informed" are not also trained to understand that they can only be informed if they question the sources of information. Walter Cronkite saying "And that's the way it is" at the end of his news broadcasts is a good example of the way the media want to convey the impression that they have objectively shown Americans everything they need to know in order to make up their minds about the world and about how to vote (Welch et al. 230).
But bias in the media comes from all sides.
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2207
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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