The US is not perfect but until recently it has always moved, inexorably, if slowly and fitfully, in the general direction of justice and greatness. The best and undeniable example of this in recent times is the election of Barack Obama, something which would have been unthinkable at any other time in our history.
But now a confluence of forces threaten to halt this progress and concentrate power in the hands of privileged minorities.
If current trends continue, in the near future the rich, and in particular the super-rich, will reassert and greatly increase their power over their economic inferiors, men will reclaim their dominance over women, whites will regain their superiority over nonwhites, the old will prevail over the young, and the vast sparsely populated rural lands will take precedence over cities and suburbs.
As we all know democracy is based on majority rule, but we also know this has always been something of a fiction, or, at best, a partial truth. Power has always been wielded by the rich and the powerful, by whites and by men. Now the right wing is actively manipulating the system to ensure that the system is permanently rigged to favor these established groups.
Our legal system, reinforcing custom and tradition, long helped guarantee that nonwhites, women and other underprivileged persons were not equal players. Further, our constitution, reflecting the founders concerns that large or more urban states would overwhelm rural states, provides disproportionate power in the electoral college and the senate to rural states.
Over the course of our history these forces successfully slowed progress, but real progress was achieved with enormous effort and resolve. As a result we now have a very different country, in which formerly disadvantaged groups have gained a degree of power and equality that would had been literally unimaginable in earlier generations.
But now, in place of the brakes that slowed progress, the minority right wing is erecting a giant dam holding back the river of progress.
Here are just a few of the most important contributing factors:
–GOP dominance of federal and state governments, despite a minority of popular support or anything resembling a broad mandate. With the singular exception of the 2004 election (which occurred in the wake of 9/11) no Republican presidential candidate has won the popular vote for 30 years. Republican appointed Supreme Court justices handed the presidency to George W. Bush, and it now appears likely that Putin’s efforts helped put Trump over the top in the electoral college. Yet despite these circumstances George W. Bush, and now Trump, have ruled as if they possessed a popular mandate to impose their ideology on the rest of the country.
—The senate, as a result of the constitutional imbalance that gives greater relative power to voters in rural states, has always been conservative; now it is dangerously reactionary.
–The house is even more extreme than the senate. In theory the house should be more broadly representative of the general population, but because of gerrymandering (and a toxic primary system) the house is now more extreme and lopsided than at any time in modern history.
–The third branch of government, the judiciary, has been leaning dangerously to the right, but it has been inconsistent and has delivered some crucial victories to the left. With the near certain replacement of the more moderate Justice Kennedy with the extreme right Kavanaugh, the court is now likely to become a permanent agent of the right. Again, this is a clear result of minority rule, the determination of Trump and the senate to eschew bipartisanship and impose their minority agenda. Contrast Trump’s deliberately provocative nomination of Kavanaugh with Obama’s nomination of the famously moderate Merrick Garland, a characteristic gesture intended to lower not raise the partisan temperature. This was met by McConnell’s refusal to even hold hearings for Garland, thereby raising the temperature.
–The Citizens United decision guarantees that the super rich will continue to use their wealth to bend the political process to their will for years to come. As a Supreme Court precedent it will be very difficult to overturn.
–After gerrymandering voter suppression is the most potent way to blunt the power of emerging, already marginalized and vulnerable groups.
–In addition to these internal forces, we now have external forces, most notably Russia and Putin, that are threatened by the existence and example of healthy, well functioning democracies.
To be clear, the right wing is imposing minority rule. Millions more people voted for Clinton than for Trump. The senators supporting Brett Kavanaugh’s supreme court nomination represent 145 million people, versus the 180 million represented by the senators opposing the nomination. Despite their minority position the GOP doesn’t hesitate to rule and govern as if it had a broad mandate and consensus. If these trends are not checked now, in 2018, then this minority in power will impose even more sweeping changes, including, to name just a few, the reversal of abortion rights, prohibitive and racist restrictions on immigration, increased income inequality, reduced access to health care, the removal of environmental protections, and privatization of the public sector by unfettered growth of private companies in schools, prisons, the military, and much more.
Broadly popular measures, like common sense gun control, reasonable immigration reform, environmental protections, and, of course, moderate judicial candidates (like Merrick Garland) are dead on arrival, and are even derided by the far right.
Most frightening of all is the complete inability or unwillingness of either the Republican controlled House or Senate to stand up to the incompetent, immoral, and increasingly unconstitutional presidency of Donald Trump. Unless this and the other trends discussed here are held in check by the coming election, the future of the United States may well look like Poland, Hungary, Turkey, or Russia.
“If conservatives realize they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will abandon Democracy.” —David From.
I wrote those words, but they look a lot more impressive spray-painted. Thanks to @mattresstagging for carrying the message to the streets of LA pic.twitter.com/uXmJdks9Ig
— David Frum (@davidfrum) August 27, 2018