What's this Democracy thing I keep hearing about?

I just finished reading a (several weeks old) article in Newsweek on China's growing middle class - largely twenty-somethings with a much bigger interest in iPods and Starbucks than in politics. It's China's "Me Generation", and as much as it scares me to admit that I too am a twenty-something, the article asked several poignant questions about the nature of Democracy and how China will interact with the west.

(Now. Let's get something straight. I am an aspiring actor, an artist. As much as I may have political opinions, I cannot make any sweeping changes at all. Never will be able to. It's just not in my cards. However, I think it's important for whatever reason that I know.)

The article ended with a mission statement of sorts, saying that this generation in China would be defined by whether or not they realized that democracy could be a good thing for their country. Which prompts me, the brattish child of the allegedly foremost democracy in the world to ask if it actually would be a good thing for them. What favors has democracy done for me lately?

Of course, there is the common misconception about big words like "democracy" and "communism" and thrown-around, emotionally charged terms like "freedom" and "human rights". Let's get something straight. China is a communist nation, which is an economic phrase before a political one; it means that they have a form of command economy, where the government has very direct control in things like the worth of money and the rates that can be charged in restaurants or how much people earn. China is a form of dictatorship. China is led by an oligarchy, a political elite that makes all of the major decisions on any number of topics, from foreign policy to health care to what breeds of dog are acceptable. The United States is a capitalist nation, again, an economic phrase before a political one by definition. We believe in a "free-market" approach to all things money, which is why there are so many entrepreneurs bobbing around. We are a democracy. The people vote, and the leaders they elect, the people that were chosen by the people, are the ones who lead us.

But.

We have an incredibly small pool of leaders to choose from, perhaps with reason, perhaps not. This pool is almost uniformly well-educated, and those that aren't are wealthy. We're not talking a four year college, we're talking private schools from birth, the top colleges in the nation (which are still among the top in the world), and if you didn't go to Yale for your undergrad, you went there as a graduate. Same for Harvard. The uppercrust schools with tradition, considerable resources, and loads and loads of very smart, hard working students. Sounds like a good pool to draw from as far as leaders go, no?

Except this is the same pool that gives us George Bush and John Kerry. Wow. Community College starts to look real good after those two...

We are just as much an oligarchy as China is. And that's ok. But we should start admitting it. Every country has some form of political elite. In Britain, if you did not go to "Oxbridge" (one of the top colleges at either Oxford or Cambridge) you better have vast family connections and political history to break into the real positions in politics. Except, if you have those, you went to Oxbridge. In France, the same can be said of the "Grandes Ecoles" which, forgive the spelling, are public universities that have the same standing as Oxbridge in Britain or the top-flight Ivies in the United States.

Of course, we do have plenty of people around that didn't go to these schools. A lot of the people running on both sides in the current race to the White House didn't go to one of these schools, but it doesn't matter. They all attended good colleges and got through with enough sense to have the records to go into politics. They're all fantastic politicos, and that's what matters.

There are so many things to be said about democracy and why politics is the death of it. But I think it's important to note something here.

The twenty-somethings in China, at least if those in this article are a representative group, which I have no way of knowing, are happy. The twenty-somethings in the United States, or at least those that I know and read about are a representative group, which I do have some way of judging, are not happy. And this has to do with their prospectives for the future.

The motto of one of the Chinese youths (can I call her a youth if she's 9 years older than me?) is "Work hard, play harder." Now. that's an interesting motto, and it sounds very American. At least in the sense that Americans are supposed to be industrious and hard working, which, forgive my saying, most of us are not anymore. We're smart, but we don't know how to work. The previous generation took all the struggle out of everything, and the current generation of parents is even worse at providing too much for their children. Yes, kids should get stuff, and lots of it. But they should also get an understanding that all of the "things", the creature comforts that a lot of people live for, take work to earn. We don't work hard in America, at least in the middle class. We play harder.

This isn't to say that the middle class doesn't work, not at all. But we don't have a sense of purpose in that work. We don't know why we're working. It's a Red Queen scenario, we're all running as fast as we think we can just to stay in place. That's what democracy has given us.

Meanwhile in China, there are still atrocious human-rights violations, and out in the hinterlands, people are regularly oppressed and forced to work for barely adequate pay while the government tries to shuffle them around. Guantanamo Bay and the current debate over illegal workers anyone?

Perhaps before we continue to point to other countries and cry foul, we should take a much clearer stock of what's going on in our own nation...