Those young enough to hope for another fifty years of life will vote on their entire future this November [View all]

[Tom Rinaldo]

This November we will collectively decide the nature of the nation we subsequently will spend our lives in. It could be the last time we have that choice. Under the democracy all of us grew up with, no matter which decade we were born in, mistakes could be corrected, wrong courses could be reversed. When poor leaders took power from good ones, we the people had an opportunity to restore better ones to power next time around. That's how a democracy functions, and we all became accustomed to that. We have taken it for granted for our whole lives.

Well, most of us have anyway. Not so for black Americans living in the Jim Crow South. For approximately eighty years, roughly the life span of a person, blacks lived under a one party state that permanently relegated them to second class citizen status. When white nationalist forces retook control of the South after the era of Reconstruction lapsed, freedom could not be restored at the ballot box with the next election. That took hundreds of lives brutally lost, and generations who lived each day under the menace of physical violence being used against them should they in any way challenge the powers that be. The police, the courts, the entire legal system, routinely weighed in on the side of the oppressors. And public dissent was a life threatening behavior.

When an authoritarian oriented regime secures a measure of power, it immediately alters the playing field so that any future contest for power is waged under conditions markedly advantageous to itself. As its power then is further consolidated, only token opposition remains "free" to "organize" against it. Serious opposition is minimally seriously harassed, and those compelled to engage in it increasingly do so at great risk to both their health and freedom.

The majority of Americans have no frigging idea what it is like to take part in opposing an authoritarian regime. In isolated cases American dissidents have been killed through the direct power of the state (as opposed to by shadowy "death squads" that date all the way back to the KKK). That happened to members of the Black Panther Party among others.

But in the democracy that still usually functions in the USA, one is much more likely to be held for several days on trespassing charges after a campus demonstration, than to be kidnapped, shot at by authorities, or thrown in prison for ten years over an act of protest. Yet there is nothing any more set in stone about our civil liberties protections as they currently exist than there was about Roe V. Wade, which so many assumed would always be there, after almost 50 years as the law of the land.

When it is said that "Democracy is Fragile," that's what it means. It can all go away. The people can be made to serve the state rather than the other way around. There are always powerful forces that want nothing more than to use government to compel most citizens to work for the interests of a privileged few. During the transition toward full authoritarian rule, they might employ some window dressing to disguise their true intent. Once their hold on power is consolidated they no longer need bother with that.

Authoritarian rule is a one way street, U turns not permitted. Get on that road and there is no turning back, not without a real and often bloody fight, with the odds heavily stacked against you. Some authoritarian leaders, like Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and most notoriously Adolf Hitler, gain their initial beach head of power through the workings of a democracy, flawed as they may have been at the time. Others, like Chile's Augusto Pinoche and Spain's Francisco Franco, come to power through force, powered by a fervent appeal to nationalism. Once they become leaders of their lands, they often remain so for life (with the system they installed sometimes spitting up another strongman to replace them when death intervenes.)

A nation like Spain was among the relatively lucky ones. It non violently moved back into the light of democracy upon Franco's death in 1975, 36 years after the dictator first seized power. It took World War II to dislodge the Third Reich in Germany, after twelve years in power and millions of lives lost. Augusto Pinochet overthrew Chile's democratic government in 1973. His17-year rule was given a legal framework through a controversial 1980 plebiscite, establishing a new constitution drafted by a government-appointed commission. Growing public resistance led Pinochet to step down in 1990, but he continued to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army for eight more years, an implicit threat to those might break with his policies..

Erdogan served as Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014, then became President under a revised constitution and remains in that office today, marking 21 years of control and counting. Viktor Orban first came to power in Hungary in 1998 but was voted out of office four years later. He learned from that defeat, and upon returning to power in 2010 systematically began undermining the foundation of Hungary's democracy. He has not lost an election since.

It is easy to forget that Vladimir Putin first rose to power during Russia's brief democratic era-. When Boris Yeltsin resigned from office in 1999, Putin became acting president and, in less than four months, was elected to his first term as president. Russia's constitution limited Presidents to two consecutive four year terms, so Putin shifted over to the Prime Minister's office for four years when his time was up (while retaining behind the scenes full authority) and then ran for his old office again. He has never left it since. When constitutional time limits on Russia's presidency next loomed, Putin arranged for a new constitution to be enacted that abolished them. People have been falling out of windows in Russia ever since.

But one does not have to agree that a Trump victory will imperil our continued democracy, and the civil liberties that we now consider rights, to accept that the quality of life in America will largely be determined for a lifetime or more by the decision Americans make in this coming November's election.

Over the last fifteen years the Roberts Supreme Court opened up the floodgates to unlimited special interest money corrupting our political system, gutted Affirmative Action legislative provisions, stripped away Voting Act rights protections, ended Roe V. Wade, and granted criminal immunity to Presidents while performing "Official Acts." Whoever we elect in November will likely get to make the next two or more appointments to the Supreme Court, potentially cementing a super conservative majority on that body for a generation or more, one that will make rulings that long outlive those justices themselves.

And then there literally is the world we will inhabit, for as long as we each may be blessed to inhabit it. Science says that our world has literally reached the tipping point with climate change. One candidate respects that science and the urgency it convey, and is committed to policies that can forestall runaway climate change. The other believes that most of our problems would be solved by drilling for more oil, and weakening regulations designed to protect the environment. Each would govern in accord with their world view The consequences of voters choosing poorly this time might be irreversible.

The 2024 election is about so much more than how excited we are about who is running for President. Choose the country you want to spend your life in. Either way you will long live with the consequences.