The term Nacirema is American spelled backward. It was first introduced by Horace Miner in, "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema." Today, it is mainly used by anthropologists to distance themselves, and avoid personal bias, when writing about American culture, its rituals and its customs.
Nacireman federal elections are coming up in less than a year. Unfortunately for Nacireman folk, they have to vote in yet another election under an authoritarian regime that is becoming increasingly oligarchic.
Although Nacirema country labels itself as a representative democracy, it is quite evident that the country is under the grips of an authoritarian regime. In Nacirema country, political pluralism is limited due to a two-party system — one can hardly say that this is any better than a one-party system.
Naciremans can form other parties. However, similar to one-party authoritarian systems, those other parties will never win. Hence, if a Nacireman wants to join state or federal politics, they are forced to pledge allegiance to one of the two parties in order to stand a chance of success. This also affects their legislature, which is often at a stalemate between the two parties.
The country has always had a turbulent history with democracy. In fact, it’s low-income and minority citizens have never truly tasted democracy. At various points of Nacireman history, non-property-holding white males, African Americans, Native Americans and women could not vote. Moreover, contemporary voter suppression continues to prevent Naciremans from voting.
If Nacireman folks actually manage to cast a ballot, it sometimes doesn’t even matter. In a democracy, each person gets one vote. However, in Nacirema country, votes are distributed unequally. In 2016, for the Wyoming tribe, each person's vote effectively counts for about 2.97 votes. However, for the Florida tribe, each person's vote really only counts as 0.78 of a vote.
Even worse, depending on the village that a Nacireman is living in, their vote — rather their 2.97 votes or 0.78 of a vote — is already predetermined by other tribesmen due to the winner-take-all system and gerrymandering.
Sometimes it may not even matter at all if Nacireman villagers skip work to go and vote (voting day is not a public holiday here. Unusual? Yes). The 2016 election was decided by people from the tribes of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Only about 80,000 votes made a difference out of the 136 million votes cast.
Soon enough, no Nacireman votes will even matter. The country is becoming increasingly oligarchic. A small group of rich elites and corporations are found to be controlling and dictating a substantial part of Nacireman policy making.
