Oh, that we had a modern-day Marcellus who could
tell a modern-day Horatio that there is something rotten, but not only in the State
of Denmark![i] Following
the ghost of a democracy that once was is not farfetched. It is happening
across the globe, but frankly, I’m most concerned about our own experiment with
a republic. Too pessimistic some might say; it isn’t as bad as you are making
it out to be. Maybe my glass is half empty but it was at least half full not
too long ago.
It is often said, and I’ve said it often, that democracy
is fragile. It relies on faith in its institutions. They are what bind people
together, they create an ethos, which says what we are about. Tear down the
institutions that sustain us and you lay siege to the democracy.
So what creates the dither, the doom, and gloom?
It doesn’t start with the last election, but that is a good place to start.
Think about a normal election cycle: candidates campaign, voters vote, civil
servants count the ballots and announce the results; The loser concedes and
pledges to help the winner make a go of it; The winner thanks the opponent for
running a hard campaign. Then voters go about their lives until the next
election. They have faith in one of our most sacred institutions.
A recent CNN poll, reported in Forbes,[ii] noted
that 46% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans believe that our democracy is
under attack. The drawback to a counterattack is that they can only agree that
it is the other party’s fault. One party will tell you that they are doing
their level best to ensure that future elections are fraud-free. The other
party will tell you that all of the fixes will reduce voter turnout and make it
difficult for anyone to vote: a power grab. More importantly, it is an ongoing
effort to reduce people’s faith in the voting process, the institution.
I can’t get all worked up about voters needing a
photo ID when they vote. When politicians tell you that people should not have
to show that they can legally vote, they too are creating distrust in the
electoral process. What I do get worked up about, however, are bills working
their way through state legislatures that give them the power to overturn,
invalidate, voting results that they don’t like. Over 50% of voters believe
they will live to see a free election reversed by a state legislature. [iii] The
rot grows.
Today, regardless of the facts, the majority of
Republicans believe Trump won the election and that Biden is not the legitimate
president. The divide is so wide and deep that thousands of followers gathered
in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, flags waving and placards raised, waiting for
the arrival of JFK Jr. (in hiding for the last twenty-plus years, not dead from
an airplane crash in the ocean?) to help Trump take back the White House. He
didn’t arrive. Last week they gathered once again to experience disappointment.
The rot grows.
We and the rest of the world are experiencing a
serious virus with new mutations coming quickly. Over 775,000 Americans have
died from the Covid virus and the number grows each day. The previous
administration’s program, Warp Speed, allowed for big Pharma to complete
research, test, and bring to market very effective vaccines to mitigate the
virus. The nation called on its citizens to follow well-tested and proven
health care practices to reduce the spread. Simple things were suggested, wash
our hands often, don’t get too close to others, wear a mask. Then when the
vaccines became available, they urged us to get vaccinated. This is not rocket
science, and it isn’t politics. It’s called doing our duty as citizens.
But too many resisted the call for national unity, for any number of reasons,
and the virus rolls on, killing more and more each week. Many leaders
encouraged people to get the vaccine but other influencers mounted campaigns to
convince people that the vaccines contained microchips that would allow the
government to track your every move or change your personality. People believed
them. The rot grows.
A friend, in a recent sermon, referenced Pope
Francis who wrote that we are experiencing a loss of “Common.”[iv] We
have become a nation of “Me.” The virus crisis brought that to bear as people
repulsed normal health practices by claiming that it was their right to decide
if they wanted a vaccine and not the government’s role to mandate it. That
makes good sound bites for the evening news, but it is not good public health
practice. I hurried to get vaccinated as soon as it was available. But I
confess that I got it to prevent me from getting the virus, without once
thinking that I should get the “jab” so that I could protect other people. I
too had forgotten the “Common.” The loss of “Common” is so widespread that the
rot grows exponentially.
Congress recently passed an infrastructure bill,
but along party lines for the most part. Those few Republican senators who
voted for the bill were vilified by the party base because they allowed the
other party a win; a win that was virtually the same as they had proposed when
they controlled the Senate. Party loyalty is more important than the common
good.
It is trite, I
suppose, to quote Franklin continually, but he did say that we have a republic if
we can keep it. It is also trite, I suppose, to cite the fall of Rome, a
democracy that couldn’t keep itself on track after only 200 years or so.[v] Volumes
of tomes tell about the city’s huge expenditures on the military, political
intrigue, and ineffective government structure, and a rise in populism.
They too had rot.
Alexander Tytler,
a Scottish historian, is an oft-referenced commentator about democracy. He
proffered that democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. He
suggested that democracies go through five stages: bondage to spiritual faith;
from faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to
abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from
apathy to dependence; from dependence to bondage.[vi] His
writings, though written while the U.S. was being formed, were more accurate
than we might want them to be. Projections, while usually wild guesses,
sometimes prove accurate. Tytler said that democracy can only “exist until
voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury
… the result is that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy,
followed by a dictatorship.”
Too much
similarity to today’s America? Are we working our way from apathy to dependence
or dependence to bondage? It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? We experience armed
civilians storming the streets and the capitol at the same time that members of
Congress try to pass a bill that shovels money, largess, to everyone who might
be in need. Somewhere in the mix, one can conclude that there will be too much
rot.
Dear Marcellus,
it’s not just in the State of Denmark!
[i] W.
Shakespeare – Hamlet, Act I, Scene iv - “Something is rotten in the State
of Denmark”
[ii] Andrew
Solender – Forbes – September 15, 2021
[iii] Ibid
[iv] Francis
– Laudato Si, May 24, 2015
[v] Edward
Gibbon – The History of the Decline and Fall of Rome, 6 volumes, 1776-1789,
Strahand & Cadell, London. While I would not claim to have read Gibbon’s
six volumes, it is hard to get through much history without at least a glance
at the library shelf and references in other history books.
[vi] Alexander
Fraser Tytler, 1747-1813 – Universal History, Vol II – Tytler was a
