We have a tendency to think of democracies dying at the hands of thugs with guns. During the Cold War, coups d’etat accounted for nearly three out of every four democratic breakdowns.
Military coups toppled Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in 2013
and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014.
So yes, in cases like these, democracy dissolves in spectacular fashion.
Leaders are imprisoned or shipped off into exile.
Constitutions are tossed in the dustbins of history.
Yet the truth is, overt dictatorships have disappeared across much of the world.
Violent seizures of power are fairly rare.
But there’s another way to kill a democracy:
not at the hands of generals, but of elected leaders
who subvert the very process that brought them to power.
A minority group has seized overwhelming political, economic, & cultural dominance in the USA, despite representing a small fraction of the overall population.
Democrats have won the national vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, (only the 2nd Bush term was actually won, and this had more to do with the hysteria of a bogus "war"...Americans do not change presidents during wartime historically) which, with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy, will have resulted in the appointment of eight of the Supreme Court’s nine justices. And yet four of those justices will have been appointed by presidents who took office despite having fewer votes than their opponent.
It was during the Bush era that conservatives began spreading visual representations of the country-level vote. Flattened out, they displayed a sea of red, punctuated by small blue dots.
These blue dots are actually the areas where most people live.
These maps, one of which Trump is known to display, create the illusion of popular support.
It's a dirty trick.
The illusion is created because of course, The red represents vast empty acreage rather than people.
And this is how the minority rules.
Over the last generation, the Republican Party has moved rapidly rightward, while the center of public opinion has not.
There is no substantive basis in public opinion for Republican government.
On health care, taxes, immigration, guns, the GOP has left America behind in its race to the far right. The Supreme Court underscores its ability to counteract the undertow of its deepening, unpopular extremism by marshaling countermajoritiarian power.
Harken back a moment with me, it's December 2000. George W. Bush had a tenuous hold on the Electoral College, despite having half a million fewer votes nationwide.
But his electoral edge depended on a narrow margin in Florida, which was attributable to the fact that voting machines in Democratic counties failed to register a higher percentage of votes than machines in Republican counties. A recount threatened that outcome (and in fact, a hand count that included every kind of missed vote, including ballots that both wrote and checked in the name “Al Gore,” would have given the presidency to the Democrats). But Bush’s brother controlled the state’s government, and it doggedly refused to allow the recount to which the trailing candidate was entitled. In the end, five Republican Supreme Court justices narrowly ended the recount and gave Bush the presidency.
The importance of the role of the Supreme Court, as a fair & just body above the din of the temporary politics of the day can not be overstated. Historically, it has largely done just that.
But the political pressures placed on nominees is a different beast these days.
No one seems to give a damn about justice or what is actually constitutional.
Rather the emphasis is on how can the constitution be twisted to support an ideology.
A corrupted use of the SCOTUS would mean that since the legislative branch failed it's duties to protect the US constitution, nothing would stop the autocratic rule of the narcissistic demagogue the minority has placed in power.
George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 each won 30 states while losing the national vote.
Since each of these states has equal representation in the Senate, the chamber gives Republicans an innate advantage. If the country were evenly split, half Democrats & half Republicans; merely attaining parity requires Democrats to win at least ten seats in Republican-leaning states.
The Electoral College reflects the same overall bias. It reduces the power of voters who live in states that vote heavily for one candidate or the other, and magnifies the power of voters who live in closely balanced states, it gives disproportionate influence to rural white voters demographically speaking.
A state that may have voted 48% for a candidate, will turn those votes into votes for the opponent thanks to the "winner take all" method of tallying electoral votes 48 states use.
(This is largely why 'electoral votes' do not reflect actual votes.)
Mitch McConnell’s indefensible claim that the Senate would not allow President Obama to pick a SCOTUS appointment in an election year, followed now by his shameless claim that this election year rule he'd made up no longer applies and is ridiculous. (Oh...yes it was...that much is so)
The Court’s near decision to destroy the Affordable Care Act previews the growing enthusiasm on the right for what legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen called “the Constitution in Exile.”
Even if Democrats gain an enduring advantage in elected office, large enough to overcome all the white and rural biases in the system, an activist conservative majority in the SCOTUS is hoped to strike down large segments of whatever they enact.
The central drama of the Trump era is a struggle to defend American democracy against an authoritarian leader. The Republican Party’s comfort with the crude authoritarianism of its president, did not spring up out of nowhere. It is the culmination of a party increasingly comfortable with, and reliant on, counter-majority power.
The Minority Rules.
Postlogue-
I don't like to frame my political observations as being related to political parties.
In the US historically these parties have stood for various things, sometimes quite the opposite of what they now represent. I'd much much rather use terms such as "liberal" and "left".
I'm proudly liberal despite the war waged against the word...well, words in general have been appropriated for politicization. Their meanings under attack.
To be clear, a Liberal imagines our world as it could be, pictures an optimistic future that is just, fair to all, and improves the lot of everyone. Then tries to make it happen.
This contrasts the Conservative who always points to the past & claims it was better, usually because of some privilege they had over others. They too try to make that happen.
I have no fondness for the way our electoral process has come to work. Instead of discussing actual policies or issues and voting on them, we have a torturous 2 years worth of essentially spam promoting a "personality" being sold like some cereal product.
It's absurd, horrendously and unnecessarily costly.
Our democracy is something that has yet to be achieved.
It's a work in process, and there are saboteurs who hate democracy.
We certainly aren't there yet. But being "liberal" I see a future where democracy actually is practiced.
Where I have no more say than you, and you no more than me.
(Particularly where those who see themselves as having more 'rights' than others are legally and fairly kept from harming everyone else.)
In today's entry, I have had to talk about the political parties.
As I say I don't like to, but one party has gone way too far in it's extremism and antidemocratic actions. It is the role of congress to reign in the lawless personal exploitation of the presidency, and it has failed as an institution to do this. It has failed purposefully to uphold the constitution they swore to uphold. And this is the doings of one party, in complete control. The Republican party.
Whatever they once stood for, now, they are a disgrace...willing to do anything...ANYTHING for power. Even embracing fascism and kissing the filthy ass of a racketeering megalomaniac intent on robbing and raping the country for personal gain.
Elections are not about individual candidates, they are about policies. Oh you may not care for either candidate in an election (I seldom do), but you better be able to discern what sort of policies their parties will enact. While I don't think the Democratic party is perfect, and I have reservations about some of their policies...most, I do agree with. And though I'm not fond of putting a band-aid on a severe head wound...(I usually am pretty sure more needs to be done), I am certain pouring sulfuric acid on it while singing Onward Christian Soldiers is not the way to go.
We may rightfully regret the electoral process is unfair, manipulated, corrupted, etc.
But this can not be an excuse to do nothing.
You must vote. And you must vote against Republicans.
The idea promoted that one party is just as bad as the other could not be any more drastically illustrated to be a lie than what you are witnessing right now.
Unlike the pervasive notion, it's not a personal popularity contest.
It's a war of ideas.
Good ones.
And very very bad ones.
If you were attacked by human eating giant squids from planet Falwell in a galaxy far far away, would you say " Gee I'd like to stop them, but I don't like the weapons I have to defend myself & family right now...I'll let someone else do it. But man, if I had better weapons I'd do something...yep, when I get the tools I ought to have..."
For now...vote.
Vote against the human eating squids.
That means vote blue.
Never give up the fight to make the world better, to make democracy work better, to improve...but don't be eaten by alien squids just because the improved world hasn't arrived yet.
Vote.
If your vote didn't count folks, do you think the Squids would be devoting so much time, energy & money to suppress it?
Vote, and vote blue.
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