Who Are We Kidding About Our Democracy?
By Lorenzo Canizares
12/12/21
President Biden has just finished his Democracy Summit, and not many people noticed. In reality it was sort of a bad joke for President Biden that he gathered other friendly world leaders to discuss an idea that most know is slipping away from us. It is not that hundreds of millions of Americans don’t want our democracy, is that there is also another millions of Americans that are conspiring to undermine it. I imagine that most countries that participated in the summit came there to humor our president, but to spend most of the time discussing how to avoid hacking from Russians and Chinese bad actors is the epitome of obfuscation.
Here we are in the midst of an assault to our democratic institutions, an organized upheaval contesting the authority of our government and of our judiciary by right-wing extremists that are not going to be convinced of abandoning their ways by lofty ideals. The Russian and Chinese hackers are a problem, but they are not a threat to our democracy. Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and the rest of their team are. Consequently, the situation we have at hand is very serious. And, if we don’t act with a sense of urgency utilizing all the legal means at our disposal, we will then be forced to use other means to protect our democracy.
Indiana’s University political science professor, Jeffrey C. Isaac, made a profound statement recently in a letter to the New York Times, he said “The reason progressives are anxious to legislate before 2022 is that they know a Republican reconquest of the House will not represent a ‘normal’ midterm electoral defeat but the victory of a far-right Party, with an even farther-right base, and this endangers democracy itself.” In reality, Professor Isaac’s statement is profound but generous in its assessment. It is not a question of endangerment it is a question of losing it altogether.
Let’s take a look at our actual situation. Our Courts have been inundated with Trump’s appointees and as we are seeing in the handling of Roe vs Wade, they are fulfilling their role of overturning it. Don’t mind that during their confirmation hearings they said they were going to be faithful to previous court decisions, that they were going to respect established laws. The whole Court system is filled with “legal minds” of this sort. And some of us keep pretending that we can reason with these individuals!
We lucked out in the 2020 elections that several important Republican players followed their conscience instead of succumbing to the barrage of attacks that they were subjected to by Trump and his team. Do we really believe that in 2022 Republican Party officials are going to maintain again principled positions like respecting the integrity of the vote? A few maybe but I am sorry to say not the majority. Democratic victories will end up being contested and not certified.
Are we paying attention to how the Republican Party has been dealing with Liz Cheney? Liz Cheney. She has been thrown out of the Republican Party in Wyoming. How do you think other Republicans are acting around this? Have we heard any complaints from other Republicans about her treatment? I haven’t. What kind of people are we talking about here? These are the people that again with a few exceptions have stayed silent or encouraged the anti-vaxx movement. No matter that we have as of today by far the largest number of deaths in the world from Covid 817,326 and hundreds of thousands more that have been left severely affected by the virus.
Our failure to properly dispose of the virus as for example the Chinese have done, or New Zealand, is that our economy is in a state of uneasiness and provides the opportunity for corporations to use Biden’s social programs as an excuse to jack up prices. Geraldo Rivera, the Fox News Commentator, a couple of weeks ago launched a tirade against some of his fellows Fox commentators for anti-vaxx statements when these same commentators have been vaccinated. Placing roadblocks to Biden’s economy is more important than saving lives.
These same people are the ones pushing to do away with any regulations regarding the gun industry. It has come to the point that massacres by firearms are not even a major issue anymore. It might not be a big deal for us but other people around the world don’t see it that way. The United States has spent large sums of money trying to get the people in Cuba to revolt against their government. People in Cuba are willing to hit the streets to protest their living conditions. But they are not willing to consider regime change partly because they are afraid of being like us.
And lastly the Alt-Right is consciously defending the fossil fuel industry since much of the monies that are accessible to right-wing activists come from people in that industry. We just saw the devastation left by the tornado in Kentucky. There have always been tornadoes in Kentucky but rarely of such magnitude. Possibly over 100 deaths. The devastating fires in California. Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The floods in North Carolina, etc. And that is only in the USA.
Our world is becoming a Russian roulette. All these “maladies” in the USA coming from the Unbridled Greed of a few that are using these “maladies” to enrich themselves and subvert our democracy.
Defending Democracy
