So you can tell you are in a democracy if nothing is getting fixed, and you get to complain to everyone as loudly as you want that nothing is getting fixed.

Why don't they want to solve our problems? Because if they do, we no longer need them to solve our problems. And besides, they can tell us that they HAVE solved our problems, and we best not disagree with them.

Paradox #6. Because of internal dissention, democracies are not strong enough to solve our problems. So people periodically look for charismatic strong men who garner sufficient power to do whatever they want, but what they don't want ... is to solve our problems.

The fifth paradox of American democracy is that people vote on the basis of a politician's promise even though they know it's a lie. I'm sure you can think of examples.

The fourth paradox of American politics is that the people who would be good political leaders are usually too smart to volunteer. And self-selected politicians are probably people that shouldn't be there.

The third paradox is that people insist on freedom of speech and equal representation, but do everything in their power to see that political opponents are suppressed and shut out of government affairs. Heretics are actually treated worse than outright opponents.

The second paradox of politics is that voters want politicians to tell them the truth, but politicians who do tell the truth will not retain their positions and will probably compromise their policy agenda.