If anyone (including anyone already exhausted by permanent war) wants to know why people on what used to be known as the left and the right are angry about what feels like, and actually is, the loss of any decent social contract between the people and the state in our "representative democracy," see Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," Perspectives on Politics (Fall 2014).