A democratic government is a type of a government representative of all constituents. Many Americans have held on to the belief that we are the winning Miss Democracy in a pageant for equality and freedom. But, what if you found out that in order to win the prize you had to wear fake teeth and hair extensions and stand in an expensive pair of heels that were actually really painful? Because that is what is happening right now in America, falsity.

With campaign ads showing children waving American flags, politicians are giving off the impression that they fight for a better America; however, what they use to defend their legislature is partisan think tanks. American has begun slipping away from democracy and slipping into a much more slimming fit definition of an “For the people”.

In their early creation think tanks were meant to be “research centers modeled on academic institutions and devoted to addressing technical questions relevant to government policy.” Today they stand as another pawn in the partisan game.

Our government stands divided like it did in 1790. Do we believe in an open discussion of ideas or a free discussion of ideas? One side can believe that partisan think tanks represent the free fluidity of ideas from either side as long as both exist, another can believe that both sides need to be represented in every article published. However, the idea that people will seek out both sides of an argument is diminishing by the tweet in today’s political climate. Think tanks are no longer incentivized to give the right answer, “for many think tanks, open discussion are just bad business.”

The government is acting like a child who just broke a lamp, but instead of justifying the accident to their parents, they tell their teddy bear instead. Politicians are not looking for the right answer they need, they are looking for the simple and sympathetic answer they want.

People who have not dedicated their life’s profession to political science, but instead chose to support their family out of school through, for example, coal mining, trust these institutions and politicians to tell them the truth. They should not have to rely on legislation that was cultivated from resources as credible and unbiased as a Facebook post by your Aunt Mary.

Although think tanks are just a deviation of the Washington legislative equation they are still an example of the American political system dividing into smaller and smaller representative numbers. There is no unbiased resource for American politicians and citizens to trust when it comes to weighing the benefits of the legislature. The press, Supreme Court, and now even the academic articles standing behind certain laws all seem to only play for one team and curse the other. Will the erosion of democracy stem from our lack of trust in political reasoning itself?…Stay tuned next time for America’s Got Think Tanks!