The first two definitions listed by Merriam Webster for democracy are: “1.a. A government by the people – especially rule of the majority”; 2.a. a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.” Those seem clear.
The United States has always been held up to the world as the model for democracy but what is going on today is taking the country further and further away from a true democracy according to the above definition. I would argue the current Republican Party and its forerunners for the last few decades have been the driving force behind this drift away from democracy. Until Trump came along, there were skirmishes launched by the Republicans and their wealthy backers, but it wasn’t until Trump won the presidency that a full-fledged war has been waged against democracy.
Trump and many of his acolytes try to make the case that they are trying to ‘save democracy’ and anyone who is against them is not a patriot and undemocratic. Several of the people that Trump seems to admire rule over ‘democratic’ countries which purport to have free elections and are governments ‘by the people.’ North Korea is officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and is one of the most undemocratic countries on the planet. Russia, under Vladimir Putin, and its neighbor, Belarus, under Alexander Lukashenko, ostensibly have free elections but they are a sham, and the world knows it.
It’s possible to call oneself democratic or put it in the name of your country but actions make it truly so – or not. Which brings me to the current Republican Party. They are not the majority in this country in almost any category except being white, Christian and without a college education. Many of the Republican Party policies are not popular with a majority of the electorate. A majority of the electorate favors access to abortion. A majority of the electorate favors same-sex marriage. A majority of the electorate is against cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. A majority of the electorate are in favor of fairly taxing the very wealthy and corporations. So why are these policies, which are favored by the majority, continuously under attack by people in the minority?
The Republican Party has undertaken a strategy to basically game the system so that a minority can force unpopular policies on the rest of the country. They are doing this by passing voter suppression laws, by aggressive gerrymandering, and by focusing on down ballot races which even include school boards. In addition, Republican state legislatures enact laws and policies that will provide an edge in the electoral college process because it is, after all, the winner of the electoral college vote that determines the presidency, not the popular vote. Trump lost the popular vote and ended up in the White House. Bush lost the popular vote and ended up in the White House.
What is currently going on in the House of Representatives is the perfect example of how a small minority can have such a huge adverse impact on the country. It is truly ironic that this tactic has been used to cause such chaos within the Republican Party itself since it is usually used to impact policies on the national and state levels against Democrats when a small minority group disagrees with the majority.
Make no mistake, the current Republican Party is not interested in operating in a democracy. They are hell bent to do whatever they can to make sure the majority does not assume, maintain, and exercise the control that would be warranted under a true democracy. The Republican Party is becoming more and more authoritarian simply because they are in the minority and the only way they will ultimately be successful in implementing policies that are not popular among the majority will be to lie, cheat and steal. And that is exactly what we are seeing.
If we are not careful, we, like North Korea, will become the Democratic Republic of the United States of America – which is not!
