This blog post started as a Youtube video. You can see it here.
Today I plan to talk about a question I often get: “Is it too late to save democracy.” A few weeks ago someone asked me this:
I’ve observed what seems to be a state of almost constant panic or despair among people who follow news and politics. I’m talking about concerned people who are engaged and follow closely. I’ve wondered if it’s a social media thing or a Twitter thing. It’s definitely a Democratic or left-of-center feeling. What I want to do now is give a thorough answer, including an analysis of the question itself.
First, a few truths:
- Yes, we’re at a crucial time. I believe later historians will look back on this moment as crucial.
- Panic doesn’t help. Panic never helps.
Among other things, I suggest that the question “is it too late,” comes from exhaustion, despair, and panic. I also suggest that social media, particularly Twitter, is a panic-creating machine. Finally, I suggest that “is it too late to save democracy?” is the wrong question. The historically correct question is: Is it possible for the United States to achieve a functioning multi-racial democracy?” –because we’ve never actually had one. We’ve come close over the past 50 years, but the pushback has been intense.
I think one reason people (well, Democrats and people left of center) feel exhausted all the time is because the Republicans need to create constant crisis and spectacle. Their economic policies are not only unpopular but their policies actually hurt their constituents, so if the discussion is policy-based, the Republicans will lose support.
So they stir up cultural wars. The idea is to get the fighters fighting and keep them fighting because if everyone is fighting, nobody has time or energy to talk about economic policies. Also, these cultural wars trigger so much fear in their own supporters that economic policies seem less important to them. They’re so fired up over the latest manufactured cultural war that they don’t care (and maybe they don’t even notice) that the economic agenda pushed by their leaders actually hurts them.
Keeping everyone busy fighting and dealing with manufactured crises is how leaders with unpopular economic policies “govern.”
Remember the nonsense about how the Democrats want to cancel Dr. Seuss? Or how Democrats were waging a war on Christmas? Well, the manufactured critical race theory “crisis” is much more effective because it triggers fears of white replacement in the Fox-viewing crowd.
In February, the month after Biden took office, right-wing media suddenly started talking about Critical Race Theory.
What a coincidence, right? Of course, it’s not a coincidence. It’s a way not to talk about economic policies and the science surrounding controlling Covid.
Another reason you feel despair is because part of the right-wing strategy is to do outrageous things right out there in public. They don’t hide what they are doing. They lie outrageously–and it’s demoralizing to see it. In fact, sometimes I think someone like Ted Cruz sits there designing his tweets for maximum outrage. Just to take an example (and not even one of the more outrageous examples, but a recent one, Ted Cruz tweeted this:
I want to pause to point out what this tweet is doing. Yale professor and historian Timothy Snyder coined a word: sadopopulism. The formula goes like this.
- Enact policies that cause pain in your own constituents (in this case, discourage vaccinations)
- Identify an “enemy”
- Blame the pain on the “enemy”
- Present yourself as the strongman able to fight the “enemy”
I’ve observed that when Republicans select an “enemy,” they prefer a harmless one like homeless migrant families. Remember the caravan “scare” just before the 2018 midterm elections? When people not caught up in the right-wing media bubble are confronted with such an obvious distortion, it’s natural to have a strong reaction: Horror, anger, a desire to mock Ted Cruz, a desire to point out the lies. It’s alarming to see elected officials tell such brazen, ugly, destructive lies. It’s also exhausting, particularly when it happens repeatedly in rapid succession. And that’s the goal. If we’re all worn out and fatigued, we can’t do the work we need to do. Right-wing leaders have to keep their supporters scared and you outraged, which creates a feedback loop of sorts. When the left is outraged, the right gets stoked.
Other factors causing people to feel despair and exhaustion are social media behavior and algorithms. If I tweet: “Democracy is hanging by a thread! We don’t have much time! This is a crisis!” Or if I come up with a plausible hair-on-fire democracy-will-be-destroyed-unless-X-happens-quickly scenario, I’m likely to get a lot of attention. I’ve seen it happen repeatedly over the past few years.
Some people just want to be popular. There are also some scholars and serious journalists who believe that if they don’t state very strongly that democracy is in trouble, people won’t pay attention. But the people who are paying attention get bombarded and worn out. Headlines are designed to get clicks. Social media, which focuses on headlines and not substance, and is click-driven is literally a panic-creating machine.
How many headlines like this can you see before you feel overwhelmed:
In a headline-driven, click-bait world, there isn’t enough perspective or context. For example, there’s a theory that sort of goes like this: “Over the past 50 years or so, the Republicans turned to corruption and lawbreaking and started trying to create an oligarchy.”
That statement isn’t false, but it ignores the rest of our history, which provides context and perspective. The statement gives you the sense that we once had (or we now have) a lovely democracy and the Republicans are trying to undermine it.
Since the modern Civil Rights and women’s rights movements, we’ve been trying to create—for the first time in America—a multi-racial democracy, and Republicans are trying to prevent that from happening.
Before the Civil Rights movement, we had a functioning representative democracy in which the leaders generally acted in the best interests of their constituents. But the constituents were white and before 1920, they were white men. Democratic institutions worked only for them.
One of the many themes from Heather Cox Richardson’s books is that American history has been a constant struggle between the forces trying to create an oligarchy and the forces trying to create and expand democracy.
By “expand democracy,” I mean “include more people.”
This is the important part: the struggle isn’t new. It didn’t suddenly start in the past 50 years. Also—and this is from Heather Cox Richardson—we have had two oligarchies in our history. Before the Civil War, 1% of the population, Southern slaveowners, controlled all three branches of government.
We had our second oligarchy during the age of robber barons, from the late nineteenth century until the New Deal. Power was concentrated in the hands of few wealthy white men, mostly business tycoons but also families that had accumulated wealth.
I have had people tell me, “Things have never been as bad as they are now.” One answer is: Let me tell you about the 1920s. Racial segregation was legal. There was no social security, minimum wage, or worker protections. People couldn’t get out of the poverty cycle.
We got out of our second oligarchy, the age of robber barons and industry tycoons, with the New Deal. But Blacks were still mostly left out. Then we come to the Civil Rights movement, which was (among other things) an attempt to include Blacks.
The pushback since the Civil Rights movement has been intense, and we’re still riding the backlash.
I’ve often said that the outrageous and destructive behavior you’re seeing now among Republicans is happening because their constituents are Proud Boys and other White supremacist groups—and they know they are losing. They can see we’re moving from a country in which Whites controlled all of our institutions (courts, government, universities) into a multi-racial democracy, and they’re afraid they are being replaced.
Now let’s talk about Republican lawbreaking. What we’re calling Republican corruption wasn’t illegal in the 1920s. There were really no laws against fixing prices, manipulating markets. There were very few (if any) consumer protections. People got rich from cheating, just like now. The difference is that it was legal then, and that’s a big difference. It was also perfectly legal to literally prevent Blacks from voting.
A related theme from Heather Cox Richardson’s books is that democracy is always in danger of slipping toward oligarchy. This is because when people accumulate wealth they tend to use their wealth to consolidate power to benefit themselves. Not all people who get wealthy do this, but enough Slaveowners used their wealth to consolidate their own power and create laws to solidify their position at the top of the hierarchy. Robber barons and business tycoons in the late nineteenth century did the same.
For the past number of years, we’ve been slipping into our third oligarchy. Look what happened to income inequality since Reagan took office:
Income inequality is approaching the levels we had in the 1920s. Now people who have accumulated wealth are once again trying to consolidate their power. That’s what many of them do. If we see what’s happening as part of a 250-year struggle instead of something new and different that has suddenly sprung up, we can approach the problem differently.
This question was specifically about the spread of lies:
Trying to build an oligarchy based on lies isn’t new. Our past oligarchies were also based on lies. White supremacy was a lie. The idea that if you got rich you deserved unlimited power was also a lie. Yes, the methods of disseminating lies are new and improved. Lies traveled slower back then, but so did information.
Here’s another reason people feel despair and panic. If you came of age during or after the Civil Rights movement, you may have a progressive view of history, which goes like this: The founders started with some pretty good ideas. The idea of a government based on rule of law instead of the whim of a king. The idea of an independent judiciary.The idea that all “men” are created equal.
These were good ideas. The problem was that the founders left out a lot of people.
The progressive view of American history is that as we’ve moved forward we have expanded who is included in the “we the people,” and as we did so, we’ve moved closer to the founding ideals and closer to a more perfect union.
Progressives see history as an upward slope.
This is often taught in schools or thought of as if it’s inevitable, as if liberal heroes of the past fought and won the battle. Some people started feeling as if we’re in a boat and we don’t even have to paddle. The wave of history and what is right and good will carry us forward to a better more inclusive tomorrow.
According to this view, all was going well, and then, over the past 50 or so years, the Republican Party went off the rails and here we are.
There’s an opposing view of American history, the reactionary or regressive view, which goes like this: When America was young it was a place of wide-open opportunity. There was almost no federal government. There were almost no regulations. People (well, White men) could do what they wanted. Then government grew and began encroaching on their freedom. The regulations that we see as creating fairness, they see as an unconstitutional infringement on their liberty. According to that view, America is on a downward slope.
In fact, I think the graph looks more like this:
There is a constant push and pull. Progressives push forward and reactionaries push back. Yes, the arc of history bends toward greater justice, but only with great effort, and much more slowly than we’d like, and with a frustrating amount of pushback.
If you think history is an upward slope, you’re going to feel shocked and paralyzed when suddenly the slope stops moving upward or starts moving down.
Yet another problem with the question “are we too far gone?” is that there is a constant shifting. Sometimes these shifts are dramatic. Chile before Pinochet had a high-functioning democracy. Then they had a dictator. They got rid of the dictator using democratic means. Then they had a somewhat high-functioning democracy.
The further you get into an oligarchy, the harder it is to get out—but remember, we got out of one oligarchy through legislation (the New Deal the Civil Rights legislation). And there has been pushback ever since.
Another question I often see is this one:
I suggest that this question comes partly from unrealistic expectations or the idea that once and for all the progressives will win the battle and the forces trying to create an oligarchy will be defeated. This will never happen. Every bit of progress will trigger a backlash. In fact, I think the closer we get to a functioning diverse democracy, the more desperate the pushback will grow.
One way for rapid change is to win elections with large majorities. That’s how Roosevelt was able to enact the New Deal. But there was still enormous and very frustrating pushback from the Supreme Court. Looking back to the 1930s, the progress seems rapid, but it actually took years with lots of frustrating pushback.
I also think the question can also arise from frustration at the slow working of democracy, but that’s another talk.
Now, finally to answer the question: “Can the U.S. create and maintain a multi-racial democracy?” The answer is: “It depends.” The future isn’t predetermined. The future takes its shape based (mostly) on what people do now. From any point, there are many possible ways forward.
I therefore can make no absolute predictions about the future. But when you understand that the future takes its shape based on what happens now, you don’t feel so helpless. History offers perspective and teaches us possibilities.