links

[tielan]

Medium: Why American Democracy Was So Easy To Destroy

Americans tend to think that “democracy” is the exercise of voting every few years, and watching cable news in between. But it is no such thing. When we speak of “elections,” we merely refer to the means of democracy. Democracy, more properly thought of, is the enactment — and the expansion — of equality, freedom, and justice. The daily practice, if you like, of these three great endowments — they are the fundamental democratic goods, the ends to which the means of democracy, elections, votes, and so on, merely exist to sustain and nurture. And yet it is precisely in these three ways that American democracy never really became much of a democracy at all. When Americans were busy sorting themselves into tribal castes, enacting their hierarchy of personhood — or being sorted that way, if you like — then it can’t be said that democracy was really occurring in any real way. Precisely the opposite was, in fact — a kind of flight from, corrosion of, refusal to consent to, genuinely democratic norms, values, and institutions.

Hard reading, but boils it down pretty effectively, I think. And yes, I see this in the Americans defending what's happening right now. They're so caught up in the fairytale of equality, freedom, and justice for all that they won't see what's actually happening. Or they don't care so long as they got theirs.

Comments

[scribblemyname]

It's a good article, but it fails to mention that America was never founded to be a democracy and only started getting called one by the "aspirational" but not the founders. It was meant to be a majority rule, specifically in rebellion against a monarchy or oligarchy where a tiny amount of people get to speak over the majority of the people. In fact, the words of the founding congress against democracy were harsh and vitriolic, believing it an unviable form of government that would descend into mob rule then tyranny.

And leaving that out does make me wonder how much the writer actually knows about the origins of America. I was rather surprised to learn that as a kid because everyone talks about democracy but America was never designed to be a democracy and it even trying to be one is a relatively recent development.

[tielan]

I dare say the author is taking a modern perspective on "what America is meant to be" rather than the founders' intentions. Seeing as the people who are bemoaning the fall of American democracy are the ones who would claim America is/was a democracy or, at least, is supposed to be.

[kore]

I remember Thomas Paine being pretty scathing about democracy! well, even more scathing than he was about gov't in general, hah.

[monanotlisa]

Yeah -- it's a national myth and always has been; certainly a country that had slavery far longer than the home country of England, and an apartheid culture even after, should know better intellectually. But, alas.

[kore]

Yeah, precisely. And now the horrific school-to-prison pipeline, which oh so conveniently provides basically slave labour for giant corporations, disenfranchises a huge amount of the population, and results in "the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement." http://newjimcrow.com/about

[lynnenne]

Wow. I mean, I knew about this, but to hear it described in such bald terms really rams home the point that slavery isn't dead, it's just been modernized.

[kore]

Yeah. I highly, HIGHLY recommend that book. It's 10 years old but if anything more relevant than ever. The NAACP has some horrifying stats https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/

Between 1980 and 2015, the number of people incarcerated in America increased from roughly 500,000 to over 2.2 million.
Today, the United States makes up about 5% of the world’s population and has 21% of the world’s prisoners.
In 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population.
African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites.
The imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women.
Nationwide, African American children represent 32% of children who are arrested, 42% of children who are detained, and 52% of children whose cases are judicially waived to criminal court.
Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US population, they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015.

And that's like ON TOP of the horrible news stories we hear about shootings at traffic stops or while black people (usually men) are babysitting or walking or minding their own business. It really drills home why "Black Lives Matter" became such a big slogan.

[kore]

Quite good, and depressing.