(Fellow patriots. We're all familiar with the fife and drums version of "Yankee Doodle", as portrayed in the "Spirit of '76" painting, right? Please put that on repeat in your mind's ear while you read this.)
In
the USA today, (Not the paper) we celebrate the Fourth of July. But what do we
really celebrate? For years it wasn't celebrated at all in the South. Today for some, it's nothing more than a day off work. Others may even celebrate
freedom, if they’re lucky enough to have it.
We know millions of Americans were not set
free on that day in July 242 years ago. They had a long wait.
Our
nation, the United States of America, was born that Fourth of July in 1776, through
the words of the Declaration of Independence. From our nation’s infancy we
rebelled against the abuse of power and unaccountable rule by monarchy. We
rebelled against “a long train of abuses and usurpations” including:
“He
has obstructed the Administration of Justice, He has made Judges dependent on
his Will alone, For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For
depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.”
It’s
as if King George III thought he was Donald Trump!
Our
cause, our mission and our duty are the same as then. NO kings! Rule of law,
not rule of man.
Yes,
as Ben Franklin warned, look at what has happened to our “republic, if you can
keep it”.
The
republic was flawed from the beginning, and the Founders knew it. Women
couldn’t vote. Only male property owners had that right. Slavery was not
only tolerated, it was expanding. The Electoral College was forced onto
presidential elections by slave states. The Founders understood that our
Constitution would need to be open for amendment for a more perfect union.
Little
could they foresee how those flaws, even after some critically needed civil
rights and voting rights amendments, would infect our republic.
The
triumph of the Party of Trump is the most pronounced and dangerous symptom of a
diseased republic. The Party of Lincoln, the one led by a man appealing to “the
better angels of our nature”, is extinct. The Party of Trump has become the
home of resentment, blame, anger, false accusations, racism, cruelty, hate, and
division, all sown by far Right politicians and their media. (Not to mention Putin’s
thumb on their side of the scale.)
The
Electoral College, the legalized corruption of campaign finance, the
gerrymandering of House districts, and the Senate itself represent serious
flaws in democracy and a structural bias against majority representation.
In
case the fact still eludes some people, let me say it clearly.
What
we have in the United States is not a democracy. When a minority seizes power
over a majority, it also not a representative republic, founded on the consent
of the governed. It is a corruption of the Founders’ dream, and for most
Americans, a failed state.
This
is what we have now. Consent of the governed has been replaced by the rule of
an increasingly unaccountable minority.
First let’s get this straight. The Right needs to know this: The majority is
NOT on their side. Although they are not losing morally or
socially, there is a reason moderates and Left are losing politically.
The
reason is clear.
Moderates and the Left are losing politically only because democracy is
losing.
First there is an imbalance in money and power. Through the legalized bribery
endorsed by the Supreme Court in cases like Citizens United v. FEC and
McDonnell v. United States , Wall Street and other corporate elites have
more Republicans than Democrats in their pockets, corrupting public service
into their private service. (Tax cuts for the rich, healthcare cuts for the
poor.)
Second is the significant over-representation of conservative rural and
suburban whites, aided of course by gerrymandering racial minorities out of
their due proportion of representation. And there’s the Senate giving equal
power to rural White Wyoming and Iowa as New York and California.
Then there's the electoral college...
No
wonder this so called representative republic is diseased almost to its death.
If, or when, democracy is restored and the majority regain their fairly
proportioned representation, the Left and moderates will be winning politically, morally, and
socially again.
As Martin Luther King Jr. understood, "“The arc of the moral universe is
long, but it bends toward justice”. And it takes centuries, even in the “Land
of the Free”.
In direct contradiction of the Founders’ ideal of “consent of the governed”,
the very reason for the revolution, we have a system of government that allows
the government to be unrepresentative of the popular vote.
In
2012, House Democrats won about 1 million more votes nationwide than
Republicans, but that wasn't big enough to put them anywhere near retaking the
chamber. Democracy lost.
In 2016 Trump LOST the popular vote but won the election while crying it was
“rigged” against him. Democracy lost again.
Democrats also got more votes for the U.S. Senate than Republicans, and yet
Republicans maintained their Senate majority. Democracy lost again.
To be a modern American conservative is to reject and obstruct democracy. Just
as they rejected and obstructed the Constitutional duty of the Black president
to appoint a Supreme Court justice, they rejected and obstructed the majority's
legitimacy and moral right to representation in state power,. They oppose the
concept of consent of the governed and support a tyranny of the minority. And
again, they are NOT the majority.
But we already know that. So let’s remind them of this:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The
majority of Americans need to exercise the “Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it”. Not by the hateful violent means of the Right’s “Second Amendment
remedies”, but by voting.
Complacency,
apathy, resignation, ignorance and cynicism need to be resisted and overcome as
much as the Party of Trump itself. The deck is stacked against democracy,
against the consent of the governed, against we the people.
It's time for real Americans to take our country back from minority rule, from the
tyranny of usurpers, and from the enemies of democracy. Since the system IS
rigged by structural bias in favor or the Right, it will take more than a mere
majority, but a landslide, to win back the consent of the governed.
The
choice is now between democracy through a revolution of conscience and
consciousness, or of an autocratic far Right tyranny by the minority of economic
royalists and their American aristocracy. Their regime is dedicated to the
suppression of democracy. And they don’t need to dupe a majority into voting
for them. They have the blind loyalty of the FOX(R) and Trump cult.
And
remember, if we want a democratic representative republic, if we want to restore
the consent of the governed, it is imperative we go out and vote. It is imperative we convey the will of the people to our politicians and it is imperative they be held accountable.
It
is imperative we be active as American citizens for the cause of democracy, and self rule, and the consent of the governed. We need to exercise our "Right of the People to
alter or to abolish any Form of Government that becomes destructive of these ends". If enough of us do so, the extremists of the far Right and Party of Trump will be defeated, and even the Democrats dancing on corporate strings will
have to listen to We the People again.
Feel the Spirit of '76! Happy Independence Day!
Now, EARN IT!