Let’s talk democracy
and how it’s under attack
I’m not going to get into the details of what democracy is beyond saying that, obviously, it’s about the people of a nation, state, or town being able to guarantee, according to established law, that the government of that entity can make the rules by which the populations should live, work, and play. To ensure that all of that population can do so according to their wishes and desires, hopes and dreams.
Suffice it to say that the United States has a government established according to such a set of laws we call the Constitution to help us do that.
In spite of the efforts of various parties over the centuries, we’ve managed to keep that going. Unfortunately, various parties today are working to overturn that democracy and are doing it in various nefarious ways within the system until they obtain the power to simply dump the Constitution unceremoniously.
I’m not here to outline all of that, but tonight, as I write this, the two Vice Presidential candidates, Vance and Walz, are having a debate. A debate I cannot watch because on the very first question — the VERY FIRST — Vance could not help himself but begin to lie. Within five minutes, he lied about Trump, he lied about Trump and his administration, he lied about Biden, he lied about … well, he just lied about every damn thing he opened his mouth to talk about.
Which is a very good illustration of what’s happening in this country.
But let’s backtrack a bit.
I am not here to tell anyone that their morals or values aren’t correct, or true, or good or not. I will talk about these things, but not as any kind of judgmental thing.
When this country was founded, the men who did so, regardless of their true motives (which I’ve talked about elsewhere), used language they knew would garner the support of their fellow lower economically class colonists—the language of freedom. Not only did they use it in their public writings, declarations, and speeches, but they put that into documents. It’s kind of hard to do that and use your private motives to actually make law, right?
So, instead of making a system that’d openly put Rich White Men at the top of the ladder, they had to use softer language that included a lot of less rich white men, and eventually, that led to just normal white guys being able to vote, which ultimately led to minorities voting and then women.
Horrors!
But here we are.
But what that means is that today, we live under a democracy, and a real one. That language they used? The language outside of the documents? That public stuff they wrote to garner support?
A part of that was about how they knew and understood that human societies grew and changed over time. Eventually, each new generation would gain control as the old folks died off. They knew and wrote about how that new generation would be different and would have a different understanding of what the Constitution would mean and how it should continue to govern in accordance with the new generation’s wishes and desires.
So, the attempts by the Originalists to change the way the SCOTUS looks at the Constitution are alarming because that is intended to prevent the future from being molded to the desires of the new generations and to keep it held back into the past. Hence the ruling on abortion. Hold that thought.
There are three ways the Conservatives are trying to prevent us from moving forward as our younger generations would like.
First, through a failed education system that prevents them from understanding what I just explained. That the Founders wanted THEM to decide for themselves how to move this country forward. Today, they want to use that Constitution to hold their base back, and preventing them from understanding how it works is one way of doing that, as well as expanding that base by preventing all the younger generations from learning the truth.
A second way is again to lie, as Vance is doing tonight. He is misrepresenting what he and Trump are saying, misrepresenting what Harris and Waltz are telling us they want to do, and misrepresenting what the Constitution means.
A third way is to misrepresent their motives.
Oh, you ask, what motives? Preserving our morals and values?
No, by telling you that the goals and outcomes of the Democrats’ policies will destroy this country and deny you the ability to follow your morals and values.
Again, I am not here to deny your values or say your morals aren’t right or true. That’s your business. But your political party cannot, by any measure of our system, dictate to me or mine that I must believe according to any values or morals other than mine.
Now, the laws we make? That’s what those negotiations are all about — democratic negotiations that bow to the majority. Not the minority. But again, I cannot make you believe anything through law, and your religious beliefs are protected by that constitution, as are mine. It’s what affects public safety that gets legislated.
There are numerous things I could talk about here to illustrate my point, but let me talk about three.
First is health care.
Obama tried to improve health care outcomes in the US by implementing a new health insurance program, but the GOP torpedoed it badly. It did improve things, but not nearly as much as Obama had hoped.
A quick story.
Almost fifty years ago, my wife and I got married. Our first daughter was born in Germany since I was a GI there at the time, and my wife was a German citizen. Since she was German, she was more comfortable in a German hospital than in an American Army hospital. I was a bit concerned about the cost, but she assured me that’d not be a problem.
It wasn’t. She got an infection that kept her there for about ten days, well beyond what otherwise would have been necessary. But contrary to my worries, we walked out of the hospital with literally NO BILL. We never even had to stop by the administrative section of the hospital. We walked right out with everything we needed to get our daughter home safely. Zero bill.
That was almost fifty years ago.
Six years ago, my youngest daughter had her son. They’re still paying off that bill! Here in the good ole US of A.
Folks, that’s fifty-odd years in which Germany, a country we literally destroyed to the very last building not thirty years prior, has had a universal health care system that covers every German citizen, and I think legal residents also. And yet, the United States, almost fifty years later, still has citizens going bankrupt over medical bills or dying because they cannot pay.
Now, I ask you. Does that indicate that our country is as “Great” as we are being told it is? That, in fact, giving us such a system would destroy the “greatness” our detractors say it would?
How? The average cost of health care in taxes for citizens in European countries with that kind of system is lower on average than Americans pay, both in bills we are charged AND IN HEALTH INSURANCE. But if you take that insurance and deduct the costs of the overhead of multiple companies and the salaries and bonuses of multiple executives in the billions of dollars and reduce that by making us a single-payer system with no executive bonuses and a single administrative system, a ton of that cost goes away.
How’d you like to go to a hospital and pay nothing, whether you’re there for a vaccine shot or for a knee replacement? Or have an accident that breaks your back, and they fix it for free?
That’s what we want, we Progressives. To make your life better.
As with, for instance, voting.
Eight states, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Washington DC, vote by mail in ballot. Every registered voter gets a ballot by mail at their registered address.
But numerous “red” States have restricted voting, using various methods, such as reducing the number of drop-off ballot boxes, the number of DMV locations to obtain legal IDs for voting, the reduction of the types of IDs allowed, the numbers of actual voting sites, and requiring women to have marriage certificates to prove their Driver’s Licenses’ use of their married name is legal, if different from their birth certificates! And, of course, those IDs are required just to vote, not only for registration purposes.
None of which are being required in those eight locations that use mail-in balloting.
Now, why would you think that States restrict the number of those allowed to vote? Quite a number of those restricting voters are “purple” states that could switch from red to blue if more of their population were allowed to vote.
Third, abortion. Now, when Alito wrote his Dobbs decision, he noted clearly that, in his opinion, the right to privacy wasn’t explicitly stated in the Constitution, so he said the government has the ability to make that private decision over abortion (a private medical decision) for you. Now, that’s pretty bad because there IS that right to privacy written there, and the inability of the government to make you board soldiers on your home is because of your — PRIVATE — right to the use of your home is where it is stated! So that’s wrong right there. He also ignored the ninth amendment, which reserves the unenumerated rights not mentioned to either the states or the People.
Now, this doesn’t sound that bad but wait a moment. That position against abortion is based on the beliefs of a number of religious groups in the US. However, a lot of OTHER groups believe otherwise, and not just Christian groups, but other religions, like Judaism.
This makes those anti-abortion laws blatantly unconstitutional! Twice, in fact. Yet, here we have the right-wing pushing Christian Nationalism, a force that is inherently Authoritarian.
These three illustrations show clearly why the conservatives want to restrict our democracy.
First, because the wealthiest of our population want to control — as they do now — our political environment and our representatives. Citizens United allows this, clearly.
And second, because those with the values and morals that the Conservatives SAY they have (and want their base to share) are becoming a voting minority.
Is this true? Yes, it is. In every election since GW Bush, the Republicans have lost the popular vote. Every Republican to win since, including Bush, did so because of the Electoral College but lost that popular vote.
After almost 25 years, those numbers for them have shrunk and kept shrinking year by year.
Obama beat Bush, and it wasn’t really that close, and he was black!
Trump won the EC in 2016 but lost the Popular vote by 2.9 million votes. In 2020, he lost by over twice that many, which lost him the EC.
So, the writing is on the wall. Demographics are clear that the younger generation is growing in numbers as is usual in human populations as the older of us die off. We are replaced by our kids.
And it is obvious to anyone with even half a brain that the younger three generations after mine — the Boomers — are not only more numerous but are easily more liberal. That’s not an equation for victory for Conservatives, trust me!
Which is why democracy in the United States is under attack.
That has two elements.
The first is the Rich White Men who still — after two hundred forty years — want to keep control of our country and our economy.
The second is a political party, driven by those RWM, who are willing to use any means possible to maintain the political power on the behalf of their donor class.
And in the last few years, the gloves are coming off. Project 2025 is only the most obvious of those indications. The lies and their attempts to keep their base misinformed about just damn near everything is a big part of that.
And I’m not going to get into Trump’s support for Russia and Putin, his attempts to undermine NATO, and his destruction of the international agreement that kept Iran from building a nuclear weapons force. An Iran that’s a supportive ally of Russia.
No, our democracy is under attack by much more than just a deranged Trump.
It is up to you and I to fight back, and right now the very best way to do that is to donate to the Harris/Walz campaign and to vote Blue all up and down the ballot in November.
So, hey, you do know that as a Medium reader and/or writer, when you read an article and like it, you CAN clap up to fifty times, right? You can come up with a system, like fifty claps for a really great article (mine!) and perhaps thirty or thirty-five for a good one, and perhaps twenty for one that’s ok, and perhaps a single clap for one you read but weren’t at all impressed with but didn’t want to just walk away from. (Same with the comments, also.) Don’t feel too bad, it was almost two weeks before I got told about it. Additionally, if you’re a newbie, and a human and not a damn troll, unless you want to be mistaken for one, do two things. First, write a story. Anything, just something you care about, even if it’s just an introduction. Second, you know that profile blurb? You know, that short thing like I have that talks about “money is truthful”? Yeah, that. Create one for yourself, because the trolls DON’T. I block profiles that come here and clap once and haven’t written a story or created a profile description. Those with fewer than twenty or so followers and often less than a hundred they’re following. So, a word to the wise. Write, and give us that profile description.