John Chuckman
FEAR OF DEMOCRACY IS BUILT RIGHT INTO THE STRUCTURE OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION
Words are misused in America a great deal in our day. That has some relationship with the establishment’s ongoing efforts to hide and lie about what it is actually doing, especially abroad in matters of the empire.
And I‘m pretty sure the overwhelming dominance of advertising and marketing for so many products, from cigarettes to political parties, plays a big role too. Advertising is, by definition, partial truth, intended to influence but not really to inform, just like its sister, propaganda.
And there is the added factor of a popular culture which has grown up with little respect for careful language and even the very meaning of words.
You can’t, as a society, be immersed in certain customs and practices without their eventually influencing everything.
So it is with America’s ceaseless battles around the idea of democracy. America is not, and never has been, a democracy.
Many of its Founders - great land owners and lawyers and successful smugglers - were horrified at the very idea of democracy. They viewed the idea much as J Edgar Hoover viewed the word ”communism” a century and a half later.
They created a Constitution with many protections for privileges and property, including even for slavery.
Over time, many of these protections were changed, but largely because they were no longer needed. Economies keep changing as technology changes, and with that change comes changes in social and political practices and institutions. By superficial appearance, America became more of a democracy with the gradual extension of the right to vote to most people and the end of practices like appointing the Senate.
However, even America’s basic structure of divided government with its checks and balances, still with us and often praised, was in fact the result of fears over creeping democracy. James Madison, one of the truly important Founders, said as much. The divisions and checks were intended as a “divide and conquer” strategy against the emergence of democracy.
And they have worked. The great establishment concerns over the possible candidacy of Bernie Sanders attests to that. Many different elements of the establishment have come together to try denying him the Democrats’ nomination – Clinton, Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Warren, and others.
The irony is, there is little of which to be fearful. Bernie is an old-fashion FDR progressive, not a socialist in any real sense of the word. The further reality is that there is little in his program that stands any chance of being enacted even were he elected. By the finest Congress money can buy? Inconceivable. And the last time I checked the American Constitution, it required both House and Senate approval of any legislation.
But the elaborate efforts to derail Bernie Sanders tell us a great deal about the aversion to the slightest risk of the people who actually direct and control America.
Even though he could change almost nothing, it would be a refreshing change to see Trump and his ugly values defeated, and it would be nice to hear a voice of reason and decency speaking for the county for a change.
