Some Realities that Chill Me (warning: long)
Last edited Thu Oct 3, 2024, 04:14 PM - Edit history (1)
America's Constitution was an (admittedly flawed) attempt to wrest political power from traditional privilege hierarchies and create a government from and for "we the people." Possibly the most revolutionary concept ever committed to a legal document.
I believe the only reason it worked as long as it did was the contemporary unspoken assumption that "the people" were, (and would forever remain) white, male property owners. Well-intentioned ones, certainly. They perceived the elements of hereditary privilege vested in family, education, economic advantage, and adherence to a state religion as the barriers to the liberty and equality they hoped to propagate and maintain in this new representative government.
A few of them did reject that unspoken assumption, and attempted to incorporate tools that would allow a gradual expansion of the definition of "the people". First, beyond the property ownership requirement. Then, perhaps someday, beyond "white". Maybe even (eventually) beyond "male".
They faced the challenge of welding together a disparate group of independent polities with very different understandings of the desirability and speed of that progress. Compromise was necessary to reassure the existing "the people" (those white male property owners) in control of various states. Their political and economic control would remain fundamentally secure, even as the new nation welcomed immigrants, claimed additional territory, and scrabbled for a secure place among nations finding America's structure threatening to their older order.
This timeline of voting rights is an illuminating look at how the definition of "the people" expanded over time.
People describe the United States as a two-party representative democracy, but to me America's history looks more like a semi-oligarchy comprised of three groups of white males:
One group is genuinely interested in realizing the most radical interpretation of "the people" and fully expanding political and economic opportunity and to those people. It's not the largest group of white men but it has the broadest support from others, which expands with each success.
One group accepts the premise of a need to expand the definition of "the people" but favors a gradual and limited expansion that will allow opportunity but preserve much of their own power and control. This is the largest group of white men and has historically held the balance between the other two.
One group has never, ever accepted even the slightest expansion of "the people" and has historically opposed, overtly or covertly, the agendas of the other two groups. It is actually the smallest group of white men but it controls the most resources.
That last group includes Christian Nationalists. I think most readers have heard of some of the more extreme forms of this ideology. They are not new. Just the ongoing and current iterations of a highly exclusionary and absolutist ideology supercharged by "Divine" sanction. In today's America they are also extremely well-funded and widespread.
The last group also includes genuine, serious believers in one or another version of the "mudsill theory". The several versions of this highly toxic antebellum holdover devolve to a sincere conviction that for any polity's economic, social, and cultural well-being to prosper, a large 'underclass' of people defined by some specific demographic characteristic MUST exist - and be maintained.
I actually found it difficult to believe that anyone - certainly not anyone in 21st-Century America - could believe, much less provide cover for, such a loathsome argument. But it never really died out, and many of the "thought leaders" of today's GOP, channeling the warped burblings of Russell Kirk, have made it the underpinning of their economic and social agenda, culminating in Project 2025.
Thanks for sticking with me thus far. Now the realities of today's America that chill me:
That third group of semi-oligarchic white males has morphed, by virtue of systematic deregulation of the economy, destruction of public education, and deployment of toxic disinformation, into full-blown would-be oligarchs. They have amassed massive amounts of wealth, influence and resources in support of their agenda. They are determined to reverse 230 years of expansion of the definition of "the people" and return all control and power to white male property owners. They are not shy about this. They are saying the quiet part out loud, now.
By deploying their stupendous wealth in service of their ideological goals with a strategy of "flooding the zone" with disinformation, scare-mongering and conspiracy theories, they have co-opted a large part of the middle group of semi-oligarchic white males. This has decisively shifted the balance of the power, influence and resources controlled by a now-substantial majority of white males, to the service of their agenda.
Many decades of maneuvering by these groups have resulted in the infiltration and vitiation of many of America's Constitutional "checks and balances" (see John Oliver's September 30th, 2024 segment on the Federal Courts) that backstop democratic power.
More recently, concerted efforts to corrupt, subvert and/or destroy the mechanism of American electoral democracy have gained effectiveness. Well-funded dark propaganda aimed at destroying faith in the integrity of the electoral process is both depressing turnout and setting the stage for "soft coup" efforts strategically deployed to overturn or subvert electoral results.
This is a lot like climate change: The further it progresses, the more difficult it becomes to mitigate, much less reverse.
If they can, fairly or unfairly, install their helots in the Executive Branch, they will have effected an event horizon. There will be no going back short of horrendous violence and destruction lasting many years and, as always, destroying the most vulnerable in the largest numbers.
If they fail to capture the Executive Branch, they will not quietly go away. They have contingency plans. We can see them already deploying those plans. They are laying the groundwork for stochastic terrorism aimed at producing sufficient civil disorder to achieve consensus that only the abandonment of constitutional rights can save the polity. The Federal Judiciary is prepped to deny and subvert attempts to restore checks and balances. The Noise Machine has an abundance of scripts ready to sow confusion, division and dissent to derail any consensus on restoring the structural elements of equity and opportunity.
These things wake me in the night.
But, like climate change, we must not abandon hope or give up on returning to the path laid out by our nation's founders. I believe we still have a majority. We have human ingenuity on our side. We understand and believe in the power and promise of science, creativity, and respect for one another's humanity. Younger generations are reaching for this torch. We cannot let them down.
I am not optimistic about what this means for me, personally, for my generation or my daughter's generation. We may have to put everything into the struggle, up to and including the last, full measure of devotion. If we do, perhaps my grandchild's children will live in an America that will again be a beacon of equity, justice, and peace.
I hope I have what it takes. Being a believer, I pray for this every day. When the moment of great demand arrives, I want to be ready to do whatever it takes, without hesitation and without counting the cost.
May it be, may it be so, may it be most assuredly and abidingly so.
somberly,
Bright
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