Is This What Democracy Feels Like?

On February 8th, a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reported: ”Just 16% of Americans say democracy is working well or extremely well, a pessimism that spans the political spectrum. Nearly half Americans, 45%, thin democracy isn’t functioning properly, while another 38% say it’s working somewhat well.” I wonder what the same poll would have revealed on February 15th? Now that Donald Trump has been impeached twice and acquitted twice, perhaps this is one of the signs that democracy isn’t working well. 

Unfortunately there are more. And it is unfair to blame the former president for all of the problems. The events of January 6th might have been instigated by his words, but the people who took part in the acts at the Capitol had many of these sentiments and concerns long before Mr. Trump took office in 2017. While one can point to the hypocrisy of Mitch McConnell in criticizing the president after the vote (and after Trump had given him all that he wanted), McConnell, Pelosi and Trump are not the key reasons why Americans feel democracy is not on the right track. This nation, to put it simply, is falling behind because one group wants to spend money on things and another group doesn’t. And the group that sways the political balance gets what they want only if they control all three branches of the government. That has not happened often since the 1960s. As a result, the function of government in making fundamental change has stagnated. At the same time, there are serious structural problems that have emerged from the 19th century that have never been addressed. Foremost is how to create a truly democratic nation? The United States was never designed to be wholly democratic. It’s gradual shifts from republicanism to limited democracy have created adversarial relationships between religions, genders, races and ethnicities, citizens and immigrants, the people and the government, within the governmental structures, and between political parties. 

I think we can learn from the past if we truly explore the past. This means abandoning the 1776 Commission style of exceptionalism history. It is obvious that hanging on to that mythology has done more harm than good. It does not mean that you have to accept the 1619 Project version of history, but acknowledge that this one gets closer to the “truth” than the other. Americans need to concentrate on uncovering the things kids learn in school and how they relate to bigger issues. For example, I attended an elementary school in a largely Jewish and Italian neighborhood. Two important stories that we studied were Sacco and Venzetti and the Rosenbergs. My classmates took important messages away from those stories that never dawned on me until I was in college. That those episodes needed to be in the curriculum over someone like a Frederick Douglass was a key to belonging in a white society. Each attempt at inclusiveness has led to visible and invisible tensions often leading to stages of physical conflict. There are stages of physical conflict and it does not have to result in war, but does lead to contestation. Illustrations of this are the fights that took place in the halls of Congress throughout Antebellum America or the manners which the Civil Rights struggles often led to police attacking civilians. 

Rather than seeing the Civil War, Reconstruction, Women’s Suffrage, and the Civil Rights Movement as the sole flash points, also consider the arrival of immigrants in the first half and second half of the 19th century, the wars with Native Americans and Mexicans over territory and resources, and the rise of populism and anarchists in the late 19th century. There were protestors and even domestic terrorists in America’s streets for over a century. And during this time, they were killing other Americans (including politicians and presidents), battling with police and others (in union strikes, riots, and race riots), fighting fellow Americans, and causing wide scale panic. We tend to overlook the prominent Anti-Semitic, Anti-Irish, Anti-Asian, Anti-Italian, Anti-Mexican aspects of American history. And while there are other groups that are victims of discrimination, if we can’t deal with these larger groups how can we examine the lesser ones? 

The fear of being outnumbered continues to be a prominent piece of white supremacy. However, if the Irish and Italians can become white, will similar rights be granted to all Jews, and possibly people of mixed races and some Asians? Where does that leave most Native Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, and Asian Americans? Hence, race and identity have never been neutralized as a threat to American democracy. Nor has class inequality been eradicated, as Isabel Wilkerson and others have demonstrated, leaving us to believe that democracy does not support equity or equality. We see this inequality in our legal systems where there are daily actions of police brutality and miscarriages of justice. If one cannot trust the laws, how can one trust the system? In this argument Black Lives Matter and the Washington protestors highlight the vast differences of treatment for their crimes. Republican voices, especially those in Congress and on FOX, have openly expressed a fear of BLM protesters while praising the January 6th demonstrators. The centrality of the Blue Lives Matter argument was destroyed in the process but no one seems to care. At the same time as many of the January 6th protesters remain incarcerated, their cries for bail and freedom offend many who know exactly how the process works. It is offensive to those who have stayed in jails for months or even years awaiting justice to hear people who have been locked up for a few weeks “demanding” organic food and the right to be released. Many of these demands are coming from people who destroyed property, stole items and defecated in the capitol. They are also some of the same people who denounced “rioters and looters” at BLM protests. This irony falls flat with their fellow inmates. Yet, as law enforcement is on trial in various parts of the nation, there are calls by the right to respect the police. Living in a democracy means that law enforcement needs to be respected regardless of your feelings on an issue. January 6th proved that was not true. Those rioters beat the police with pipes, flag poles and handmade weapons. They sprayed them with several chemicals. 

What the twenty-first century has revealed is an unraveling of American democracy. There is a gentle slide towards anarchy and equally towards authoritarianism. There is a bending of the laws to favor one particular interest, and often the minority, not the majority rules. These are not traits of a working democracy. I think there are daily lessons from the mass confusion promoted in the United States. We see it in the control of the press, the rise of social media, interested politicians, and a growing national apathy. It is a consequence of endless wars, failed strategic, economic and social policies, the intrusion of religion into politics, and a crumbling infrastructure. It is tied to the denial of science and calls for isolation in a competitive world market. It is a loss of place as children struggle to learn and compete with their global peers. A divided nation only serves a small segment of the population. The consistent reinforcement of this type of system slowly pushes the nation towards an economic or a racial civil war. Democracy in the United States is slowly disappearing at a time when we need it the most.