Why American Democracy Was So Easy to Destroy

Posts : 4360 Join date : 2013-01-16

This is probably going to upset some people.

Why American Democracy Was So Easy to Destroy

Good article. Thanks.

I have some issues with this editorial. I think it misses a couple of marks, and misstates others.

I'll just leave it at that.

How about telling us what your problems were with the article?

Maybe another day. Right now I'm battling an ear infection & feel like shit warmed over.

Sorry to hear about your ear (pun intended).
I just came back from an appointment with an oncologist. Passed with flying colors. Yahoo!

I see an otolaryngologist on Thursday, which has to be one of the longest specialties in the dictionary. Congrats on your results.

"otolaryngologist"

That's why they are always called ENTs.

No, you're confusing them with EMTs.

No, I'm not.

Columbia University Irving Medical Center wrote:: Otolaryngology is a medical specialty which is focused on the ears, nose, and throat. It is also called otolaryngology-head and neck surgery because specialists are trained in both medicine and surgery. An otolaryngologist is often called an ear, nose, and throat doctor, or an ENT for short.

fa·ce·tious
fəˈsēSHəs/
adjective
adjective: facetious

treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant.
synonyms: flippant, flip, glib, frivolous, tongue-in-cheek, ironic, sardonic, joking, jokey, jocular, playful, sportive, teasing, mischievous

I suppose you're trying to make a point there, but I have no idea what you are referring to.

_Howard wrote:: How about telling us what your problems were with the article?

America hasn't been a democracy since the Articles of Confederation. We're a representative democracy -- and there've always been fights over who best represents us (and who "us" really is).
American democracy hasn't been "destroyed." Like global warming, the stock market and hemlines, political trendlines zigzag between two extremes and those of us lucky enough to have been born since the Second World War have witnessed a lifelong trend toward progressive liberalism (with smaller zigs and zags along the way). Civil rights, desegregation, Roe, worker protections, environmental protection, endangered species protections, graduated income tax, a whole list of things. We think of them as "progress." Diehard conservatives think of them as governmental overreach for the past three generations, and they've been playing the long game to overturn the liberal majority.
Hollywood represents a California view of the USA. It is not shared in, for instance, Mississippi.
Hollywood and most national media outlets represent a religious view somewhere between weak Protestantism and atheism. This is not shared in the many Baptist regions of the country.
"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people" (falsely attributed to Thos. Jefferson) is still true. The main reason political discourse has gone in the shitter since the 1980s -- and why Republicans have gotten elected with a B-movie actor, a C- student & heavy drinker, and now a Reality-TV conman, is Faux News. This was a direct result of the overturning of The Fairness Doctrine (1987) and the responsibility of public airwaves to broadcast verifiable news to the "citizenry."
Umair Haque dates "New America" to forty years ago, but by the election of Ronald Reagan, America had already suffered the Right's pillory of Jimmy Carter over his standing up to OPEC and the Ayatollah, his support for universal healthcare, Superfund cleanup legislation, the legalization of cannabis, and other liberal issues. Reagan was the END of New America, not the beginning. What we're seeing now is not a new initiative, but the flowering of roots planted by dedicated conservatives forty years ago.
If there was such a thing as "New America," it lasted from about 1962 to 1976. It never took root. It was a top-down imposed social order, rather than a bottom-up grassroots reorganization, so it has been resisted by Old America ever since. And not just politicians either.
Kavanaugh is not a new phenomena. Hell, he's just a light-skinned Clarence Thomas. Old money, privilege, entitlement. Watch the new retrenchment begin wholesale rollbacks of post-WWII liberal advances in equality and fairness. That is their agenda. They don't even try to hide it.

NoCoPilot wrote:: America hasn't been a democracy since the Articles of Confederation. We're a representative democracy

Well, if you want to get picky, we're actually a democratic republic.

Other than dates and semantics, is there anything in that article with which you disagree?

(Please, no numbered lists.)

Heavy sigh.

Umair Haque wrote:: American democracy is taking its last few breaths, fighting for life.

No, it's not. You're too young to remember, but there was a time in America when progressive liberal politics ≠ "democracy."

Umair Haque wrote:: Imagine a person born in the 1940s, 50s, or 60s. What kind of society did they grow up in? They lived in a country where “intermarriage” was illegal — where you could not love another person if they had the wrong color of skin, ethnicity, background. They lived in a place where “coloured” people were not allowed into the same restaurants, on the same buses, or in the same schools.

I don't have to "imagine" this. I am such a person. I remember segregation and miscegenation and homosexual love. But you know what? Just because it was illegal and/or frowned upon didn't stop it from happening. Your binary understanding is wrong.

Umair Haque wrote:: until 1971, America was an apartheid state. This, they can’t bring themselves to accept that term, that idea. It triggers too much shame, fear, guilt — and resentment, perhaps, of the messenger.

Truer in 1951 than 1971. The reason people tell you you're wrong is because you're wrong, asshole.

Umair Haque wrote:: there was a strict hierarchy of humanity, of personhood. At the top were white men. Below them were white women. Below them were other kinds of men — Asian, Chinese, and so on. And then finally black men — and last of all, black women.

The hierarchy has always been, and still is, economic not race. Muhammed Ali won the world heavyweight title in 1964 and everybody loved him. Sidney Poitier won an Academy Award in 1964 and everybody loved him. Louis Armstrong had a hit record with "Hello Dolly" in 1964 and everybody loved him. You haven't a clue what you're talking about, grasshopper.

Umair Haque wrote:: Imagine the American who grew up in such a world. He is still alive, isn’t he? He remembers a world of dominance and power and control — old America. And it seems to me these days perhaps that he longs for it. And least some hims do. He is wishing for a return to the stability and comfort and easy pleasure of that world — a world still within living memory.

A world where the rich roam unencumbered by taxation, social responsibility, government regulation. Where capitalism is unfettered.

It has nothing to do with race or democracy.

It's rich-vs-poor.

The “New America” Haque is looking for — if he’d been smart enough to do his research — was the New Deal.

Before his time. Beyond his understanding.

Here's an article on pretty-much the same thing, but it's much better written and makes a lot more sense.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-electoral-college-trump-president_us_5bbfa692e4b0bd9ed558283a

The two articles have almost nothing in common.

I don't know what your problem is with Haque, but it seems personal.

As to your childhood experiences with segregation, etc., you were born on the cusp of change and I don't know how you could have much first-hand knowledge of the situation in the fifties and sixties.

When I was a senior in high school, the grade schools in the town I lived in were segregated: one school for white kids and one for black kids. Black people were not allowed in town after sundown except for the movie theatre, where they were only allowed to sit in the balcony. I never saw one in line at the snack bar. There was also a drive-in movie, where they were not allowed at all.

When I was in the Navy, it was still de facto segregated. The technical school I went to had several thousand students; I can't recall ever seeing a black man on base, except in the mess hall and the barber shop (it was the same aboard ship). My class had about 120 students - and not one of them was of color. Not one. I got out of the service in the same month that the Court declared laws prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional.

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