On the left side one sees a totalitarian state. In such a society power is consolidated in the hands of a tiny minority of the population (of which the state is always comprised); hence the narrowing of the pyramid as it goes up toward the end with the most power. Conversely in a free society, the pyramid is upside down, and power is broadly distributed amongst the people in general; hence the narrowing of the pyramid as it goes down toward the end with the least power.
What should concern you, is that most Americans have an inverted perception of this illustration, meaning that though they were given the form of government on the right, they behave as though they have the government depicted on the left. They have a backwards perception of where power rests in their society, and therefore when their government is corrupt, they blame those that administer said government instead of those truly in charge. Themselves.
The entire farcical spectacle of American government today, is one of an incompetent boss who hires incompetent employees, who then subsequently blames the employees for the resulting mess. The people are the boss but never seem to figure this out. They just keep blaming their servants, and mindlessly swapping out one bad servant for another, and wondering why nothing improves. Our problems as a society will never truly be "fixed," until the people realize their proper role in the governing process, and take responsibility for their own incompetence. But it needs to be understood that this incompetence does not merely produce inefficient government. It produces oppressive government.
Under a representative form of government elected officials are merely extensions, indeed mirrors, of those they represent. If a representative is stupid, corrupt, and immoral, it's because his constituents (or at least a majority of them) are likewise stupid, corrupt, and immoral. If the general government of the Unites States is stupid, corrupt, and immoral, it's because the preponderance of Americans are stupid, corrupt, and immoral.
There's a reason the values and beliefs of Obama supporters mirrored his own. Likewise it's no coincidence that the values and beliefs of Trump supporters mirror his own. Each was chosen by his supporters precisely for being representative of their values and beliefs. One sees in an elected official the embodiment of the ethos held by his supporters, of whom he is the focal point, appointed to exact their collective will.
Slowly over time, ever more with each new generation, the American people are rotating the pyramid 180°. It seems silly to have to explain this to people and yet given the current state of society it's plainly necessary. Americans today are essentially perpetually abdicating their powers to the state. The American people's warped perspective on government, induces them to view their servants as their masters and to redistribute power from themselves to their servants, under the misguided auspices of fixing problems far beyond the intended purview of those servants. The president, for example, was never intended to solve "health care" problems and thus was not empowered by the Founders to that end. Yet the executive is assuming that power, in defiance of the Constitution, with essentially no opposition from the American people (of either party). The natural result of this is the gradual transition of the government on the right into the one depicted on the left.
Viewed individually, as increasing the power of the state by 1% to deal with one issue, this slight augmentation of government power always seems harmless. But collectively over decades, if done once a year, within fifty years you've increased the power of the government by 50%. This is a hyper-simplistic analogy obviously. In reality this ceding of the people's sovereign power to the state has occurred innumerable times, resulting in the current government of the United States, which operates so far beyond its intended trammels it would be unrecognizable to the men that established it. And an ignorant, oblivious populace, is doing little or nothing of substance about it at any level.
Many states allow for the removal of ineffectual or malfeasant servants, for example, but the people simply don't exercise this recourse. So ignorant are the people of their own role in government, they simply leave bad servants in office for their full terms allowing them to inflict maximum damage, only to eventually swap them out for another just as bad or worse than his predecessor. The same ignorant electorate that appointed the predecessor appoints his replacement to often equal effect. (This is why I don't particularly support term limits. They don't do anything to fix the actual problem. It's a false panacea that treats the symptom as opposed to the source.)
The unpleasant reality is presidents, governors, senators, congressmen, et al., are not to blame for our socio-political woes. They never were. It was always your fellow American walking down the street. They hold the real power under a representative form of government, and they make the real policy decisions. And as long as they refuse to own that responsibility, and the consequences of their own incompetency in executing that responsibility, things will only get worse, until eventually, they have redistributed all of their power away to their servants, and are no longer masters of the political process, but slaves to it.
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