Gore Vidal, in an interview with the New Statesman, October 15, 2001:

How we dare even prate about democracy is beyond me. Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale. It's far worse than anything that occurred in the Roman empire, until the praetorian guard started to sell the principate. We're not a democracy, and we have absolutely nothing to give the world in the way of political ideas or political arrangements. God knows, the mention of justice is like a clove of garlic to Count Dracula.... I'm a true protest-ant, so I do protest at the ignorance. And that's my unpopular role, alas.

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