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As we saw on the corruption page, things don’t go terribly wrong just because a little screw-up here or there... the real trouble happens when some people take advantage of the interconnectedness of our social institutions and force wealth and power together in unnatural ways. That said, it’s also fair to say that what usually sets the dominoes tumbling is the initial fall of the principle of universal representation. Another way of looking at it: unless you’re very lucky or very ruthless, once your vote becomes meaningless you can pretty much kiss the rest of what you’ve got goodbye.

And although it’s not always crystal clear how or when this happens, once it does it’s not too long before all of us start to feel uneasy about our future. Then those of us with the energy - or sick sense of humor - to open our eyes wide and bear witness to the collapse see just how far a corrupt system becomes deaf and blind to all our needs.

A tyrant - by vote sizing standards - is simply any self-proclaimed politician who, under the guise of a popular mandate, refuses to listen to, appreciate, invigorate or obey the will of the people; and instead use their privileged position to do whatever the hell they please.

Stable Inequality with a Representation Pyramid

Over the course of history, people in search of good governance have engaged in an endless tug-of-war between those who pull for ‘rule-by-many’ democracies and those who prefer ‘rule-by-a-select-few’ republics. In addition to this dynamic, there are people with anarchistic leanings who reject the contest altogether and want as little (to no) ruling as possible. Like most things, each ideology has its own strengths as well as weaknesses:

Anarchies

True anarchies are positively wonderful in principle, as everyone is responsible only to themselves. However, history - and a lot of underreported news stories - show that in the real world anarchy ain’t so swell. Although anarchies can work in smaller groups (like families and organizations) they lack the strict control structures needed to maintain order when large numbers of people come together.

Warlords/Chaos

Because anarchy doesn’t provide much of the infrastructure needed to deal with larger populations, warlords use force to fill the power vacuum. With warlords, each individual region has its own haphazard rules in place, so traveling, trading or intermingling involve taking one’s life in one’s hands. These little dominions encourage others to spring up in defense, and before you can say ‘national identity’, chaos and gangsterism take over. Being a warlord is not the safest profession nor the most stable form of government, and it's usually not too long before another ‘leader’ claws his way to the top to make life miserable for all.

Of course, it should go without saying that being treated brutally by a local gangster isn't any better than being treated brutally by an oppressive state, no matter what either of them preach.

Dictatorships

Eventually, in the ruthless environment of warlords/chaos, the most forceful warlord will use enough overpowering of the others and internal purges to gain control of the state. Once in place, dictators represent a juicy target for ambitious subordinates, so unless a firm grasp is maintained on everybody, civil war can easily break out. Do poor civilians get caught in the crossfire? They sure do, and so anarchies and dictatorships are often two different sides of the same lousy coin.

Monarchies

Monarchies are similar to dictatorships, only there is a family lineage within which power is passed down from generation to generation. This succession of power through somewhat controlled channels serves hopefully to preserve the integrity of the kingdom, as rulers are encouraged to leave an intact state for their children to inherit. Of course, even though their intention might be clear enough, the over-insulted environment presented to the budding royalty often makes for rulers without much common sense or understanding of their subjects’ lives.

Republics

Republics are similar to monarchies, except more than just one family holds control. Ideally, republics are based on the idea of limited power-sharing among people who demonstrate that they are natural leaders. Because of this arrangement, republics are supposed to be more flexible than monarchies. Of course, the questions that need to be asked are: 1) How are we to determine that someone is a good leader? and 2) Is it worth national stability to keep people at arm’s length from deciding their own fate? (Vote sizing responds to this question in the vision page.) So, in order to maintain order under the weight of these serious questions, republics need to use a lot of force and mind control to keep from imploding.

Democracies

Full-blown democracies are based on the principle of maximum sharing of power, and they work well in small-to-medium sized societies, organizations and co-operatives, because they encourage the free exchange of ideas and really facilitate the getting-to-knowness of your neighbor. A democracy, however, also lends itself to herd mentality and mob rule, where the minority voice gets drowned out by an overpowering majority.

The most famous example of people coming close to a political democracy is Ancient Greece. However, trying to give every person a perfectly equal voice takes a lot of effort as the group grows, and can result in endless bickering and eventual paralysis, so the Greeks had lots of slaves, foreigners and spouses to do the work necessary in order to give the male body politic the free time to endlessly mull over the affairs of the state. In addition, there are no hard-and-fast rules to determine exactly how this democratically equal power sharing is supposed to happen.

Representative Democracies

The synthesis between republics and democracies is the representative democracy. This type of arrangement is well-suited for large societies like the Roman Empire or the United States (often mistakenly called a democracy), as the accepted inequality present in a representative democracy provides quite a lot of stability. Most often, the most welcomed trend is the one toward representation. Even in large societies - thanks to the evolution of more and more incredible technologies and organizational skills - we keep striving to insert more and more democratic ideals into our republican power structures. At the core of this effort is the desire to balance equality with the need for a hierarchy. In order to achieve the maximum amount of representation possible at every level of power we demand full accountability to those below. Through this kind of proper representation, there is a system of stable inequality - and while every citizen’s voice is not directly heard in all debates, that citizen can elect representatives who, he trusts, will speak for him in a voice true to their own.

The best type of power is when it ascends in a pyramid structure.

So although the actual structures for government have been reshaped and remolded many times over the past millennia, at each epoch we try to gear the structure more and more so that power flows upward from the people through layers of representatives. This causes the system to take on a pyramid shape. The pyramid model of government allows a system of checks and balances to ensure that the determining factor the government acts upon is the will of the people. On a personal level, the mechanism that helps us build this pyramid is our vote, but there are also other arrangements we employ such as campaign rules, referendums, appointments, coalition-building, dividing of powers, recalls and impeachments.

Corruption = Tyranny Hourglass

While a representation pyramid is very stable and honorable if left pure, who nowadays doesn’t harbor some suspicion that the people we elect into our government actually represent powerful interests which are not our own? What’s happened to derail the pyramid, and how are we to recognize the flaws?

Well, when the representation pyramid becomes entangled with the rule of law, opportunity, and/or reward pyramids, it becomes corrupted. As we saw in the corruption page, corrupted pyramids become hourglasses; and so a corrupted representation pyramid becomes a tyranny hourglass.

Although many dictatorships, republics, anarchies, etc., try to cover up their nature by being tyrannical, it’s not a prerequisite. They are not identical to a tyranny, for only in tyranny do we find an attempt to manipulate the system and pull the wool over the people's eyes. Tyranny represents a corruption of the system. This means that we have to be extra vigilant, for tyranny can just as - or even more - easily overwhelm a representative democracy as any other political system.

Corruption interferes with the proper ascent of power to create a pyramid structure.

In an hourglass, three different systems coexist. In the TOP there is dysfunction, where the ruling leaders no longer represent the people’s interest. Those in the MIDDLE are frustrated and grow detached because they work too hard but accomplish little. At the BOTTOM of the hourglass, the people’s needs, votes and voices are silenced, without their realizing exactly how they have lost their power or influence.

The ^\Dysfunctional^/ Top

In the top of a tyranny hourglass you can find... tyrants. These are people who, by manipulating the system, slither into public office and control policy. Regardless of what the people want, tyrants do whatever they can to consolidate their power. Because tyranny exists only with the help of other wealth/power schemes, tyrants use a combination of brutality, patronage and greed to stay on top. If this means that they’re going against the will of the people who want them to get rid of brutality, patronage and greed - then so be it. Tyrants are too busy worrying about themselves and each other to bother with what they’re supposed to be doing.

Hypocrisy One of the main ways to recognize the disease (imbalance) of tyranny in the representation system is through one of its main symptoms - hypocrisy. When tyranny manifests itself into the political realm, you know that the voice of the people is being corrupted and twisted. None of us are immune from this twisting either, and this inverted voice implants itself in all of us as hypocrisy.  Instead of being truthful, as we elect them to be, corrupt politicians easily get caught up in all kind of lies. Following their lead, we become amazing truth twisters too. From "I didn't see the stop-sign" to "I drive better with a little buzz on" to "my pure-bred attack dog wouldn't bite anybody" to "my vote doesn't matter" (we'll get to that later), hypocrisy becomes a driving and maddening force for anyone trying to  intelligently guide society over the inevitable hurdles. Here are some tell-tale signs of hypocrisy that indicate we’re living under a tyrant. See how many you recognize:
	Self-Interested: Politicians are elected to office on a platform of reducing the influence that government has, but then once in, do everything they can to consolidate their power.
	Evasive: Politicians hide their decisions behind a veil of secrecy.
	Heavy-Handed: Politicians claim to be promoting freedom, yet their actions speak in favor of a hard-core movement towards an underlying realpolitik of the day.
	Invasive: The government stops regulating the public life of industry and instead turns its attention towards the private lives of the people.
	Rigid: Politicians feign deafness when questioned as to what caused them to act in a certain way, instead just reciting the ‘party line’ over and over, ad nauseam.
	Manipulative: Politicians assume mandates never given to them or else exaggerate their support base into something much larger than it is.
	Deceitful: Politicians project their own motives onto the population and steer the conversation to what they want it to be about – leaving us with the lousy taste of their words in our mouths.
	Hostile: Instead of fixing their own failed states, politicians direct blame towards fabricated enemies, either domestic or, more often, foreign.
	Deserters: Politicians operate domestically under a facade of legitimacy, actually taking the majority of the important decisions based on the desires of foreign interests.
	Immature: Politicians get into office by promising to be the most open and transparent - only to once elected quickly and efficiently give the axe to any whistleblower who dares stick their necks out.
When you're done, click to tally up your checked boxes.

The _/Crunched\ Bottom

The people at the bottom of the hourglass are still, for all they’re aware, in a right-side-up healthy pyramid - only it’s crunched like hell under the weight of the tyrants’ control. The people at the bottom might elect a mayor or governor, rally, or even hire a lobbyist, but no matter how hard they try to be heard, there always seems to be a much more powerful voice whispering to the politicians out of their earshot. Unable to build meaningful power platforms, they continue to rub against each other and compete for the attention that’s due, yet never comes.

The |Squeezed| Middle

Those of us in the middle usually prefer to ‘mind our own business’ when decisions aren’t vitally important. But squeezed in between the bottom’s crunching and the top’s elitism, we see our voice of reason being diminished, yet by nature refrain from doing anything drastic to regain it. (See the interaction page for an explanation of how vote sizing is radically effective in taking on the existing corrupt power structure.) At best, we try to engage with the established political process by running for local, municipal or regional offices, but at the end of our struggles, we all too often end up having to choose between joining the corrupt top or the ineffective bottom. As a result, most of us who seek to restore decency to politics quickly grow disgusted and turn our backs on the polarity. So instead of having a calming effect, we lead the way towards apathy and a ‘defeated voter’ syndrome – upon which tyranny is based.

Tyrant's Toolbox

Tyrants ain’t dummies. How can they be when, if they don't keep on top of things, in time people will figure out that the government isn't so hunky-dory and threaten to revoke their support (or worse)? So instead of setting a laid-back example for the rest of us, tyrants need to work very hard and smart to make sure that never happens (and keep us working just as hard trying not to fall behind as things go from bad to worse.) To help them - along with the distracting effects from their brutality, patronage and greed - they keep a toolbox full of handy-dandy tyrannical devices to keep the masses down and the tyranny hourglass in place. These tools span the spectrum from minor sneaky subversions to outright criminal activities.

Tyrannies do not want to deliver a knock-out punch to the system, instead preferring to continuallly undermine our involvement by an endless series of very sharp, but non-fatal, jabs to the side of our heads.

Sneaky Subversion

Due to the dynamic nature of building power structures, there will always be an element of ambiguity in the methods used. Without close monitoring, these fluctuating components needed to properly build a representative democracy are susceptible to being taken advantage of by deceitful politicians and parties. Often, distortions of the political process are not necessarily illegal but verrry sneaky. Without enough monitoring, these political loopholes are plenty big enough for crafty tyrants to wiggle through and almost impossible to push out of once in - like the camel who’s allowed to poke his nose in the tent. Here are some of the legal and pseudo-legal ways that tyranny can take hold:

Gerrymandering

A prerequisite of holding any election is deciding who's going to participate. This is usually done by drawing geographical boundaries. Contrary to what we're told and how the lines dart all over the map, the drawing of borders is often anything but arbitrary. In fact, the most common dirty trick used by opportunists to steal an election is in subverting the necessary process of districting and redistricting. Unscrupulous political parties draw district lines, often in seemingly nonsensical shapes, in order to flagrantly affect voting results and guarantee their candidate’s win. The word "gerrymandering" was coined in 1812 when, to suit his own political purposes, Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry crafted a district that looked like a salamander. How powerful is this border-drawing stuff? Incumbents in the U.S. House of Representatives use tactics such as 'packing', 'cracking', and 'kidnapping' to ensure a 98% retention rate. So even though we still get to speak up, when what we’re saying doesn’t suit the tyrants' needs they shuffle us around so we drown each others’ voices out. Regardless of the short-term gain, it's a net loss for all of us, as the ultimate effect of gerrymandering is to further dilute our collective say in how our government is run.

Global Gerrymandering

For the real go-getters, gerrymandering also exists internationally in order to carve up whole populations and ethnic groups. When the Americas were carved up, many smaller Indian bands were packed into one collective and forced to duke it out amongst themselves, while other larger and stronger bands were cracked by new borders drawn across their lands. In the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, the European colonists chopped Africa apart and then put it back together in such a way as to keep the Africans either at each other's throats or else separated by many new haphazardly placed national borders. As WWI was winding down, Britain carved up its acquired Arab territory in order to control the flow of their oil. And the Kurds had their homeland divided by four countries in 1923, effectively making them politically non-existent. From Tibet to Basque, Quebec to Aceh, Biafra to Chechnya, separatist movements seek autonomy from governments that they perceive work against them. And this is just a partial list. Thanks to international gerrymandering, there are more than 300 indigenous nations around the world that are not official states.

Partisan Recalls and Impeachments

Recalls and impeachments are two very important democratic tools that offer us the ability to oust leaders who are not acting in our interests. (The earliest Roman dictators were allowed office only because of a limit on their term and the ability to recall them. Same with the earliest corporations.) But at the same time, it’s also possible for special interests to take advantage of the recall and/or impeachment process to cast doubt on or force out politicians that the people legitimately want in office.

Coerced Referendums

The referendum process is another important democratic tool that allows the citizens to have a direct say over which laws are, or are not, enacted. This way for the people to directly speak their will is an important part of the representation pyramid, but sometimes referendums can be initiated by politicians or political parties trying to circumvent the political process. For example, if the people don’t vote on the referendum the way the politicians want them to, the politicians will just initiate the referendum process over and over again, eventually getting their way by simply wearing out the voters. Then once the decision has been made, it can be very difficult to reverse.

On the flip side, corrupt representatives can make a legitimate referendum process such a pain in the a_s for the people that few choose to participate in it, and then use the low turnout to say that the people have spoken out against the proposed changes.

Payola Politics

If you want to see a good example of how your political voice is being eaten whole by economic interests, look at the logic behind the argument in favor of campaign finance from professional lobbyists and special interest groups. Under the guise of freedom of speech, massive corporations and private interests swing the political agendas around their own poles by turning the political arena into an open market of influence peddling, much like speculating on pork futures. So while the big money interests get all the representation they can buy, the rest of us are stuck in the dark, holding onto a vote that in many ways has already been voided.

Dumbed Down Debate

To those with keen observation skills, the whole campaign finance reform exercise/debate is just a distraction from the real culprit: the media, which only adds to the interference patterns that we need to see past. How ironic is it that that that bastion of trustworthy, unbiased information doesn't even cover how the whole campaign system is essentially geared towards raising money for ...them? So as we sit slack-jawed in front of the television sets, waiting for the stations to provide some comprehensive information on which we can base our decisions, what we get is titillation and in-depth coverage of the latest scandal. Then, before the drool has a chance to dry, we're pounded with commercials for beer and cars. Why? Because like nowhere else, in the media time is money - and by denying the candidates access to their audience, the media force them to fork over a ton of their contribution money. It's no wonder that all that comes through the tube, then, is more ads, more meaningless slogans, and more coverage of campaign mudslinging.

Pork Peddling

Along with campaign contributions, the second arm of big money influence happens after elections are bought (or decided, depending on your point of view). Once the new politicians settle into their corner offices, a whole new round of policy-buying begins. Corporations hire lobbyists – an industry unto itself – to pressure politicians to enact policies favorable to their clients. In return, the lobby groups give politicians all kinds of perks, like incredibly lucrative jobs once their government gig is up or the support of massive voter blocs – blocs large enough to swing the next election.

Shadowy Appointments/Nominations

Accountable, who me? Elected officials transfer power to appointed bureaucrats who carry out the elected officials’ self interests. But you can’t say anything about it: the bureaucrat does not have to answer to you.

Bureaucrats spend most of their time lobbying their superiors for positions in large-budget agencies - so that they can in turn be wined and dined by the most generous lobbyists. Then their superiors wine and dine ‘our’ representatives that sit on the appropriations committees and determine their budgets - a formula for cronyism. So most of the real work is done by the pack of dutiful civil servants, who have to adjust to the frequent changes in bands but never get invited to join in the dance. It’s a wonder any work gets done at all.

Giving Them Help They Really Don't Need

A particularly dirty trick involves political parties donating money or steering attention to candidates on their opponent’s side who can destabilize that party’s solidarity - either during the campaigning or during the other party’s primaries. If they can’t be broken from within, then support - financial and otherwise - can be given to third parties to split a threatening opponent’s power base.

Foreign Meddling

Sticking their fingers in another country’s soup: our elite call it promoting freedom around the world, but the rest of the world calls it foreign meddling.

For all the U.S. propaganda about “free and fair” elections, undemocratic stances are nothing new. The U.S. is just as happy to work with a military coup leader as a democratically elected one, as long as the leader opens his country to American mega-corporations always on the hunt for more customers to buy their blue jeans, soda pop and cigarettes. Unfair and tyranny-ridden ‘democracy’ is just a means to that end for the elite.

Stealth and Lies

Pyramidal democracy is often loud and contentious; the opposite is true when hourglass politicians conduct stealthy and clandestine passing of legislation. For example, politicians will wait until just before a big holiday - when we're shopping, decorating, partying and cooking - to bring unpopular legislation to a vote. Other stealth techniques include giving a bill a friendly name to cover over its ugly side and parceling up and tucking away important legislation inside larger bills.

When stealth won’t work for a tyrant, lies will suffice. For example, in order to get elected, politicians positively drip with sincerity as they make all kinds of unrealistic promises that, whaddya know, once in office they don’t keep. Many of them even get re-elected later on promises to remedy the problems their lying caused in the first place.

Criminal Corrosion

Once in a while, sleight-of-hand just won’t do the job for tyrants; they need something more powerful to maintain their status quo. That’s when they reach to the other, murkier, side of the toolbox, where they find tricks that aren’t just sneaky but also blatantly against the law. These criminal tools include:

Dirty Tricks & Smear Campaigns

If a politician or political group can’t get their agenda passed through the normal (or at least less criminal) channels, they often resort to dirty tricks and smear campaigns. The elite’s bag of tricks includes forging letters, planting false stories in the media, arranging IRS audits of rivals, attacking one’s own political campaign to generate sympathy and publicity, and one party buying up all the tickets for another’s important event and/or organizing 'public' demonstrations during those events.

Vote Buying

Another aspect of criminal corruption used to influence elections is the practice of vote buying and other types of financial promises. This practice goes hand in hand with places where citizens actually could make a difference but have lost confidence in their vote ever meaning as much as something with more tangible value – ranging from new shoes for the kids in poor countries to university tuition amounts in wealthy ones.

Voter Intimidation

If you can't buy their votes, then make them another offer that they can't refuse. Voters are often discouraged from voting for their preferred candidate - or even voting at all - by men with notebooks, cameras, machetes, dirty looks, bombs and/or machine guns. In the more ‘civilized’ countries it’s uncommon to be threatened with death, but economic pressure is often applied instead as examples are made in the media of anyone who speaks out with a contrary opinion. Watching celebrities take a fall for expressing themselves teaches the rest of us a lesson in tyranny – to keep our mouths shut.

Election Fraud

Even when voters do make it to the polls and cast votes for their chosen candidates, corrupt politicians find ways to nullify their votes. For example, hiring goons to shuffle or lose ballots, tampering with the voter registrations, contesting things like hanging chads, demanding recount after recount, or bullying through a contested result.

Various voting formulas show how different goals can be achieved

Where to go from here?

Congratulations, you've made it through the tyranny section!

As we saw, tyranny forms the backbone to many of our social ills - which is the reason why vote sizing is such a threat to those corrupting the system. So if you want to see how vote sizing, through the Democratic Empowerment Party, is an arrow shooting strait into the heart of tyranny and corruption, skip to our action page. Otherwise, to see how corrupted power is distributed, read about brutality on our next page.