SAVING DEMOCRACY IS STILL ON OUR TO-DO LIST

Democracy Diverted / 2018 / Pasted paper collage / RCS

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN—at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation—in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention.

SAVING DEMOCRACY IS STILL ON OUR TO-DO LIST

Saving democracy is still at the top of everyone’s to-do list.

At least everyone I know.

Living in a democracy, or in Ben Franklin’s 1787 language, a Republic, means the social order is upheld, by rules, laws, standards, and that our system of government is in healthy shape – transitioning from the outgoing to the incoming administration.

If not, our democracy, or Democratic Republic becomes a deeply damaged system.

No president elected by We the People is supposed to “take over” and start checking off items from their own (or someone else’s) agenda, taken from some bizarre dystopian sci-fi nightmare document, merrily taking away rights, services, departments, as if they own the joint. They don’t.

According to the founding documents, We the People hire people to work to make our lives better. Dealing with issues, challenges, and life-altering things like pandemics, the economy, infrastructure, human rights, and the Climate Crisis. The list goes on.

Presidents don’t own the presidency, the country, or the citizens of the United States.

One party doesn’t own We the People, Democracy, or the inner workings of the United States government.

Presidents, congressional lawmakers, and senators, are voted into office for a set period of years. This is done by voting them in, not installing unelected people that bypass rules, systems, and legalities.

This fever dream of running an authoritarian dictatorial regime, with elected and un-elected leaders who don’t even want to lead – but prefer dictating, and harming millions of lives along the way – isn’t how most people want to live their lives in the United States of America.

The vision put forth by right-wing extremists – of dismantling, plundering, and ripping down and stripping away rights is wrong as wrong can be.

So yes, for a long list of reasons, Democracy is worth saving, as are the monthly Social Security benefit checks that arrive for millions of American citizens. Any cuts in Social Security, as is the plan to entirely get rid of it, is unconscionable. The same holds true for the long-held desire of the right-wing to privatize Social Security benefits.

Social Security payments are earned benefits, and calling them “entitlements” is about as absurd as referring to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party.” As Shakespeare might say, “Get thee to a dictionary.”

Funny how big-picture conversations immediately become granular. And turn into those kitchen table issues some politicians were focused on, like the cost of groceries. Just before the election. Now, not so much.

For a thriving economy, it takes well-paying jobs, like the ones that built the American middle class, in the middle of the twentieth century. Many of the jobs of the 1950s and 1960s were well-paying union jobs.

From the postwar baby boom era until the mid-1970s, American middle-class prosperity was experienced all across the United States. Then, in 1980, when Reagan was elected – he implemented an economy damaging policy based on trickle-down economics, along with union busting. Which was the beginning of the end of middle-class prosperity.

Why the message of bringing back a strong middle class in the United States didn’t resonate with enough voters to overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic ticket, in the recent 2024 presidential election, I’ll never understand.

Living in a democracy should mean everyone has the possibility to go as far as they want to go. We live in a country where citizens can put in the effort to make a better life for themselves and those closest to them, was what generations of Americans were were taught. Do we really want this to longer be true?

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