Ted Grimsrud—March 12, 2024
The more I learn about the history of the United States, the more I question whether this country has ever had an actually functioning democracy. In the mid-19th century, abolitionist leaders Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison argued with each other about whether the problems with the then oppressive American slavery-embracing nation-state were due to roots found in the Constitution or more in spite of the Constitution. About 100 years later, a similar debate emerged between Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. I find myself inching in the direction of Garrison and Malcolm and their views that the Constitution is a much bigger part of the problem than the solution.
Regardless of what we think about the original intentions of the Constitution, though, the facts seem to be that it has failed to prevent the emergence and growing reality of an American oligopoly characterized by the rule of a wealthy (and ruthless) elite at the expense of the wellbeing of the mass of the nation’s population—in defiance of the actual will of the people. I suspect that the US has always by and large been an oligopoly and that the myth of popular self-rule has always been mostly untrue. Nonetheless, things seem to be getting worse, and we currently face an extraordinary crisis with no hint of a creative way out of it.
Continue reading “Twilight of the American Empire: A Time for Despair? [American politics #8]”
Thinking Pacifism 