Today I’m beginning a series exploring this slide from
democracy, eventually focusing on the time period from 1970 to the present.
With this first post of the series, however, I must acknowledge
that the United States has never been quite the democracy we’d like to
imagine. From the beginning,
anti-democratic elements have had a profound impact on American
governance. I’ll begin with a discussion
of a few of those elements that are enshrined our Constitution, and follow it
with a summary of other democracy-threatening phenomena in American history: (1)
oppression of African-Americans; (2) McCarthyism; and (3) government lies about
the Viet Nam War.
This will set the historical stage and provide
perspective on and background for my more detailed examination – in later posts
– of the last forty years.
The Constitution: Our original Constitution was hardly the
democratic paragon we fantasize. It was written
by land-owning, white, male elites1 to
preserve the power of land-owning, white male elites.
- The Senate was chosen by state legislatures,
- The judiciary was nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate,
- The President was chosen by the Electoral College, whose electors were not bound to popular will.
- Only the House of Representatives (a mere one-half of one of the three branches of government) was directly elected by the “people.”
Even with those firewalls against “too much democracy,”
only white, male, property-owners (about 6% of
the population) were given the right to vote. The Constitution was consciously designed to protect wealthy merchants
and landowners from the redistributive tendencies of
popular government.
Additionally, the Constitution is shot through with
provisions to protect Southern slave owners:
- the Three-Fifths Compromise
- the Fugitive Slave Clause
- apportioning each state, regardless of population, two senators,
- checks and balances that discouraged change,
- and others.
The Constitution is a flawed document that
concentrated power in the hands of the very few until subsequent Amendments
gave some power back to those who had originally been ignored. One can follow its strong bias for the elite from
the beginning until Donald Trump and the worst of his anti-democratic
activities. Nevertheless, the
Constitution was, at the time, the most
democratic founding document in the world and it allowed for still greater
democratic norms to come.
Oppression of African-Americans: To write about our slide from democracy since the 1970s is not to ignore our country’s most egregious stain, the ongoing oppression of African Americans, who, according to our laws, were not even “people” until 1865. With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the South began promulgating Jim Crow laws that severely weakened the impact of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; African Americans were essentially re-enslaved, destroying any pretense of full democracy. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the rights enjoyed by the white majority began to be effectively enforced for African Americans.
Soon, however, mass incarceration replaced Jim Crow2 to deprive millions of African Americans of basic rights, including the vote. Further, the implicit bias and persistent institutional
racism still keep African Americans from full participation in the democracy.
McCarthyism:
We also cannot ignore the McCarthyism of the early 1950s during which Senator
Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin directed an inquisition against purported Communists
in government, the arts, the media, and so on.
Those attacked lost careers, friends, social standing, spouses and more
as McCarthy trampled on their Constitutional rights in a real “witch
hunt.”
Viet Nam War: Neither
can we ignore the now-documented
lies that created and fanned the Vietnam War. Despite President Johnson’s early recognition
that we could not win that devastating war, and even in the face of massive
protests, millions of Vietnam and 55,000 American lives were sacrificed. The President lied to the American people and
usurped the Constitutional war-making power of Congress.
I mention these few of our democracy’s many failings only
to remind us that Trumpism did not spring full-blown from the head of
Zeus. We can see in the Constitution’s
bias toward the elite the foreshadowing of Trump’s cabinet with a net worth $4.3
billion or of the recent tax bill’s give-away to the wealthy. We can see in our history of extreme racism
and exclusivity the foreshadowing of Trump’s racist and anti-immigration
rhetoric. We can see in McCarthy’s
attacks on the media the foreshadowing of Trump’s attacks on the “fake news” of
the national media. And we can see in Johnson’s
lies about the Vietnam War the foreshadowing of Trump’s hundreds
of well-documented lies (many of which he still repeats), such as his claim
to victory in the popular vote or that he doesn’t benefit personally from the
recent tax bill.
To summarize:
As powerful a force for good as our democracy has been,
it has also been imperfect and never worthy of the constitutional idolatry with
which we hold it. We can trace our
history of democratic imperfections from the Constitution all the way into
Trump’s presidency. Nevertheless,
democratic norms had held relatively well until events in the mid-1970s
transferred enormous power from the people to the elite. And even in comparison to those events, Trump’s
current assault has been unprecedented in its breadth and depth.
In the next post of this series, I’ll explore the
impact of the Depression and the post-
World-War-II era of prosperity that both gave us confidence in our democratic norms but also enfeebled our defense against the coming attacks by corporate and elite power in the late 1970s.
World-War-II era of prosperity that both gave us confidence in our democratic norms but also enfeebled our defense against the coming attacks by corporate and elite power in the late 1970s.
1 I have previously resisted the term “elite” as a vague, pejorative term that inflamed arguments unnecessarily. The definition of the word, however,
is precise and non-judgmental: “a small group of powerful people
who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or
skill in a society.” I can think of no
better word to describe those who have held extraordinary political power
throughout our history.
2 Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow,
2012
