Solid things – like Roman coliseums – last a very long time. Republics and democracies, not so much. Benjamin Franklin must have been staring directly at us, America in 2024, when he was answering what kind of government we’d just created. A republic – if we could keep it. The answer, clearly, is no. We cannot keep our republic. We just elected to end it. Make no mistake. America – the one in all the studio movies and 1950’s TV shows, the one we’ve sold to the rest of the world since the end of WWII – is now over. It’s gone. Just like that. It’s heartbreaking but, if we’re honest with ourselves, not really surprising. America, from its inception, was always a great idea, botched.
Election day 2024 is another date that will live in infamy.
It’s the day Russia – successor to the Soviet Union – won the Cold War. It’s the day the Confederacy pulled one out from long distance – and won the Civil War.
And it’s the day that slavery re-asserted itself as the flaw that made “All men are created equal” pure bullshit.
America just rejected the outcome of its own Revolutionary War. When Trump’s SCOTUS raised the POTUS above the law, they reinstated a king. A kaiser. A Caesar. Guys like that in power never work out well for democratic principles.
But – and, again, if we’re honest with ourselves and America’s actual history (as opposed to the one invented for it), at the country’s founding, a third of the people living here did not want a democratic government. They wanted to remain subjects of the English crown. The southern states – the ones that became the Confederacy – never trusted democracy.
In fact, as the founders banged together the Constitution, they themselves compromised the very thing they were creating by accommodating slavery. How can “men” be equal if one is a slave and the other owns him? A government that would allow such a thing doesn’t seem to grasp what democracy actually is.
But, the Confederate states did grasp how democracy worked. That’s why they made Black people three-fifths of a white person. That didn’t just limit their personhood, it limited any sort of electoral power they might could possibly have. Nonetheless, the white guys drafting the Constitution baked such thinking into not just the document but our collective concept of “democracy”.
Great idea, crap execution – right at the jump!
Ya see? The fix was always in. That third of Americans who never liked or trusted democracy never went away. Neither did the Confederacy. After the Civil War ended, lots of Johnny Rebels headed west. And their compatriots back east? They rejoined Congress after Restoration died. Using that power, they empowered the Confederates out west – by giving them statehood.
Why are there two Dakotas? Were there too many Dakotans for one? Fer fuck’s sake, there are more people in LA County than there are in the two Dakotas combined. And you could toss in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, too. All that real estate with more representation per person than all us Angelenos.
That’s how you fuck democracy. You destroy the core democratic principle. You empower some voters and votes over others. Or you prevent others from voting. Or, if they do vote, you refuse to count their vote. This has been part of the GOP’s battle plan since the were the Dixiecrats. Southern Democrats who hated Lincoln (and Republicans).
What happens from here? No idea. Since the Civil War’s on again, we might as well treat the slavers to a taste of secession. Personally, I hope to be a citizen of either California or Cascadia – a democratic country with democratic values. I would be willing to bet there are similar conversations going on all over America – in blue places.
I cannot bear knowing how we are about to completely betray every ally we’ve got while changing sides and standing with Putin.
But then, we long ago changed sides and stopped standing with Abe Lincoln. So there’s that.