Democracy For All or Democracy For None
Issue #689 The Choice, Thursday, August 1, 2024
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Democracy For All or Democracy For None
“Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore, because frankly, we will have such love, if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK.”
Donald Trump, July 26, 2024
When somebody tells you who they are, believe them. I don’t know how many times we need to repeat this for some people. I guess until it works.
The frightening thing about democracy to many rich and powerful people is that, when it’s working as it should, there are far fewer rich and powerful people around. But more importantly than that, in a true democracy where folks are equal and no one is above the law, rich and powerful people don’t get breaks. No tax breaks. No special treatment in the courts. No weighted influence in the halls of government. In a true democracy, a rich man’s vote doesn’t weigh any more than that of a homeless man.
So obviously we in America have never lived in a true democracy, even though that’s what we like to call ourselves. To be charitable, what we are experiencing – and have been experiencing ever since 1776 – is a democracy in progress. Democracy is the beautiful baby that never quite gets born.
But as imperfect as our democratic experiment may be – or let’s just say as imperfect as it is – we have also never lived under fascism or any form of a dictatorship. Not in this country. And those fellow citizens who have lived under such conditions are only too happy to set anybody straight who wants to lazily claim that this is where we are. It is not. Putin cannot be voted out. Trump was voted out. Therein lies the difference.
What keeps our vague resemblance of democracy alive is the people who believe in it enough to fight for it. That includes not just super-patriots like President Joe Biden, who committed the ultimate act of patriotism when he stepped aside from his campaign and threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. It includes much more regular people who don’t just vote, but take the time to study the issues so that they actually know what they are voting for – and against.
What threatens our democracy-in-progress-forever from becoming an actual full-fledged democracy is folks like Trump who believe some (like them) are more equal than others (the rest of us), which means that democracy is in their way. And so they exert all of their formidable power and influence keeping democracy as weak and tame and neutered as possible. They are the true reason why that beautiful baby has never been born.
Well, that’s part of the reason. The rest of the reason is those of us who lazily take democracy for granted, and who don’t think it’s worth our time to protect our own citizenship. And so the fight, which should be waged constantly by us all, is instead repeatedly handed off to those valiantly overworked few whose wobbling knees attempt to shoulder the entire burden time after time, day after day, year after year.
I would wager that if just a small percentage more of Americans took the time to shoulder some of this fight – and to learn why that fight is necessary and will always be necessary – then we would be that much closer to a true democracy. Because a fully functioning democracy requires a fully functional and engaged citizenry. Anything less, and we get that much less of a democracy – and that much more of what Trump represents.
You don’t just get what you pay for; you get what you are willing to fight for.
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