How to Tell a Democracy from a Plutocracy

If Uruguay can go from Nazi-harboring banana republic to this, surely we can go from Second Gilded Age plutocracy back to middle-class democracy.

 

Samuel Knight at Washington Monthly:

The New York Times has profiled the modest lifestyle of Uruguay’s President, Jose Mujica, who “shunned the opulent Suarez y Reyes presidential mansion, with its staff of 42, remaining instead in the home where he and his wife have lived for years, on a plot of land where they grow chrysanthemums for sale in local markets.” The Times paints Mujica’s lifestyle as sort of a humdrum radicalism: “We have done everything possible to make the presidency less venerated,” he said. A former guerrilla who spent over ten years in solitary, Mujica has overseen a government that has legalized marijuana and same-sex marriage, extended reproductive health rights and has encouraged investment in renewable energy.