WikiLeaks combines several of my prior interests in technology, policy questions, and journalism.

Thus far, both political parties have been remarkably clever and effective in concealing this new reality. In fact, the two parties have formed an innovative kind of cartel—an arrangement I have termed America’s political duopoly. Both parties lie about the fact that they have each sold out to the financial sector and the wealthy. So far both have largely gotten away with the lie, helped in part by the enormous amount of money now spent on deceptive, manipulative political advertising.

This whole force is utterly demoralized by victory. There seems to be neither head nor tail.

If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism.

A fierce and sentimental addiction to forms makes us shudder at change. It is much easier to say that the system is all right-only the people need to be improved.

But that's not how most of the people mentioned in this book became wealthy. Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful.

It is much simpler and easier to collect and caress the trophies of our democratic inheritance than it is to fashion up-to-date tools with which to work on our current problems.