FOUNDING FATHERS SYNDROME

What a week in a country prone to earthquakes! Insurrection Hearings… Gun Rights expanded… Roe vs. Wade overturned. I must begin by stating that my perspective is not remotely American. My outrage erupts where friends are unmoved, and when the pillars of society are collapsing for others, I recognise little foundational change. For despite differing opinions over the three news pieces dominating the end of June, Americans on both the left and the right equally cling to mythic phrases like ‘the brilliance of the founding fathers’… or ‘our divinely inspired constitution’.

For someone more attuned to the antics of a parliamentary system across the pond, the contradictions of the American form of democracy never cease to defy logic. My own despair over the state of a divided America set in when I realised the current partisan divide was inevitable from the start, and that there is now little hope for an American union characterised by blue and red camps who are physically moving apart from one another to form, in essence, two smaller blue unions divided by a large and relatively empty red one.

One could argue for the ‘brilliance’ of the American system, in which, politically speaking, a minority party is not dominated by the majority party. Heavily populated Democratic states can at best these days hope for equanimity in the US Senate due to the rule of two senators per state regardless of size. The elephant in the room is the electoral college that appears on track to hand the presidency to the loser of the popular vote more times than not.

But I am confused by the liberal reaction to the 50-year backlash against Johnson’s Great Society and the Civil Rights Movement. The gnashing of teeth and pulling out of hair is accompanied by protests of how unfair everything is and of how the Republicans have played dirty and don’t believe in democracy… or the institutions that protect that democracy. There is truth to this, as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was overheard saying he wished to make the lives of liberals ‘miserable’. Though this particular grievance is surely the result of his wife being branded a traitor in the court of liberal public opinion. Time will tell if Republicans decide to overplay their hand and go after marriage equality.

As I see it, Democrats have had 50 years to fight back… 50 years to accept they are at war. Yet for those 50 years, all they have done is point out how their opposite numbers have broken the law, believing that if they shed light on the failings of the Republican side, the public will rally to their cause. The opposite happened. Democratic candidates moved to the center or center right, making them Tories in any other country. The Democrats have continuously sued for peace during the last half century, appealing to so-called traditional conservatives. But the Republicans understand they are at war, and have successfully branded the word ‘liberal’ a dirty one and Democrats as un-American socialists. Liberals move to liberal states, and Republicans mop up the rest of the undesirables within their borders by gerrymandering districts and dismantling voting rights.

The Democrats could have made Puerto Rico and D.C. statehoods a priority, thus enshrining a Democratic majority in the Senate and providing an insurance policy against certain senators who don’t support their own party’s platform. They could have then used that power to pass meaningful gun and abortion legislation that favored the Democrats’ viewpoint. They did not choose to do this. If the Democrats are unwilling to fight or stop holding grudges against their own (the Bernie supporters who stayed home played a part in handing the presidency to Trump), then how can they hope to bring about a progressive, environmentally-friendly America that saves us all from the excesses of the 20th Century? Elections have consequences, and if the larger political party had shown up in greater numbers at the polls over the past half century, it would be another set of consequences we would be talking about today.

But here’s the thing: ALL is fair in love and war. One man’s broken law is another man’s adapted law. Democrats still cling to the idea they are playing politics, instead of fighting a war that will be just as decisive in its outcome as the U.S. Civil War of the mid-19th Century. I would argue that a civil war fought in the 21st Century would look exactly like today; children are dying in classrooms rather than soldiers in a field.

My UK sensibilities would have devised a different strategy for the conservative cause that would have brought about 50 years of sweeping firearm regulations, education reforms, and a universal cradle-to-grave physical and mental healthcare system. So that once the axe fell on Roe vs. Wade, the Republicans could have said, ‘We’re the pro-woman party. The well-being of you and your child are our prime concern. Your children will be taken care of in the womb, and they will not be slaughtered in a classroom.’ To suggest such changes are not economically feasible in the richest country on earth would be laughable if it wasn’t insulting. (And only the most disingenuous among us would suggest the founding fathers could fathom the need for an AK47 when contemplating the 2nd Amendment.) But, instead, the Republicans continue to outright lie about gun regulations not making a difference. Per capita statistics coming out of blue states and other countries clearly show that regulations make a dramatic difference. Canada (a wilderness country that loves its guns) has experienced 23 ‘massacres’ since the year 1689 AD. In the United States, mass shootings are a weekly to daily occurrence.

But this brings us back to the founding fathers. The Soviet communist system ignored the reality of human greed. America’s founding fathers established a partisan presidency that fuels tribalism. They are to be forgiven for this shortsightedness because of growing up under a king. A country without a strong executive was anathema to their understanding of the world. However, the pitfalls of combining partisanship with the legitimacy of an election were beyond the understanding of the men in white wigs. Better to have made the presidency a ceremonial position and lay true power at the feet of an American prime minister. The founders assumed the three equal branches of government would jealously guard their powers. The opposite has rung true. Congress has happily handed powers to the presidency over the past 100 years in the name of tribalism, and Supreme Court justices openly side with the tribe that appointed them. A well-intentioned system of checks and balances ultimately lead to stalemate and a party over country philosophy. Within the conservative American character it is impossible to feel victory unless one can also point to the vanquished and say, ‘I beat you.’ But again, if the Democrats are not comfortable seeking victory within a society propped up by a system of winners and losers, then should they feel surprise and shock when they lose?

America will celebrate its 250th birthday in 2026. That is the number of years the British lieutenant-general, Sir John Bagot Glubb, declared as the average lifespan of a country. The United Kingdom reached 300 years in 2007. With Scotland in a state of ‘neverendum’ and words like ‘inevitable’ being used in relation to Irish unity, one could argue the UK is nearing the end of its current political settlement. Of course, ends bring about new beginnings, and I would argue that school children reading history books in the future that refer to the transition from United Kingdom to United Kingdoms will mean very little to young people who still share an island and can hop on a hover train to glide across an invisible border in less time than it takes to traverse London by tube.

I would also suggest we are now witnessing the unraveling of an old political settlement in America. As the first civil war determined the federal government holds primacy over the states, this new cultural civil war appears set to deliver ultimate power over domestic issues to state legislatures. What remains to be seen is what happens if this also translates into a Republican dominance of the three branches of federal government for generations to come. If the politicization of the Supreme Court also leads to a US Congress and Presidency that remain eternally out of Democratic (the majority) grasp, will the Democrats simply move even farther to the right, or will powerhouse states like California entertain serious conversations over their continued place in the union?

It is virtually impossible to change a person’s entrenched beliefs. But in a country all about winning or losing, one can choose to fight for victory or retreat and admit defeat. There’s no middle way forward.