The End of American Democracy?

 

The End of American Democracy?

January 9, 2023

 

Republicans now control the United States House of Representatives. They have elected representative Kevin McCarthy of California Speaker of the House, the person who stands third in line to the presidency of the United States. It took them fifteen ballots to do it, and to win, McCarthy had to convince six extreme Trumpist representatives to vote “Present” rather than vote against him. He was elected with only 216 yes votes, less than a majority of House members. It is not entirely clear how much McCarthy had to sell out to those six extremists (although I’m reluctant to call them that because McCarthy and nearly every Republican representative is an extremist in their own right) to get them not to vote against him. We do know at least that he agreed to a change in the House rules that will allow any representative to move at any time for the removal of the Speaker, something that would only tie up the House in a total waste of time and stop any constructive work from being done (not that I expect Republicans to do any constructive work in any event, which I don’t). It is clear that in order to satisfy his ego drive to be Speaker, McCarthy had to give the crazy extremists of his party essential veto power over all legislation. The Republican majority in the house is so small, 222 to 213, that five Republicans voting against any bill would stop it from passing as long as all Democrats also voted against it. In theory, I suppose, that gives some power to the Democrats, for if enough of them to offset the no votes of the Republican crazies voted for a bill, it just might pass. Still, as a practical matter, the six Republicans who voted “Present,” Biggs, Boebert, Crane, Gaetz, Good, and Rosendale, not Speaker McCarthy, will control what happens and what doesn’t happen in the House of Representatives for the next two years.

Because even the majority of the Republican representatives are themselves right-wing extremists, and because of the power of the “Present” six, the prospects for American democracy over at least the next two years are dire at best. The Republicans have all vowed to slash spending on Social Security and Medicare, vital programs for millions of Americans, myself included, that we all pay for our entire working lives. They have said that they will waste immense amounts of their time and our money investigating what they call the “weaponization” of the FBI and the Department of Justice. By “weaponization” they mean that those agencies have been doing their legal and constitutional jobs of investigating possible criminal acts by the Republicans’ baby, former president Donald Trump. Never mind that there is more than adequate evidence against Trump not just to justify but to demand such investigations. The FBI and DOJ are not acting politically in those investigations. The House Republicans will be acting politically, and despicably, when they conduct investigations of those agencies, investigations in support of which there is not one shred of objective evidence.

Yet that will probably not be the worst thing these House Republicans will do. There is one thing Congress must routinely do that Republicans have long complained about but in the end have done. It is to raise the federal government’s debt limit. Borrowing is the only way the federal government can pay its bills, a fact that results primarily from the way Republican Congresses and presidents have slashed taxes for wealthy people and corporations, something they have done every time they have had the chance since at least 1981. The debt is mostly the Republicans’ fault, but that doesn’t mean they will vote to allow the government to keep servicing it.

It is highly unlikely that this Republican-controlled House will vote to raise the federal government’s debt limit. Without an increase in the debt limit, the United States will have no choice but to default on the payments on prior national borrowing it is obligated to make and fail to make other payments it is legally required to make. When that happens, the US economy will collapse, probably at least to at least Depression-era levels. That will cause the entire world economy to collapse. The US federal government will essentially be unable to function at all. Failure to raise the national debt limit will have the effect of destroying the country’s national government.

That is precisely what the craziest of the Republicans want. Doing it is why they ran for Congress in the first place. It is why millions of ignorant Americans voted for them, something I am utterly incapable of understanding. Do that many Americans care about nothing but their own tax bill and say to hell with every other consideration? Apparently so. Do so many Americans either not care that their representatives refuse to condemn the seditious conspiracy Donald Trump led against the United States’ constitution and government that led to a deadly assault by Trump’s followers on the United States Capitol in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the next duly elected president? Apparently not. Do so many Americans not care that their darling boy Donald calls white supremacists fine people and treats women as sex objects? Apparently not. Do so many Americans not care that their darling Donald cozies up to murderous dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un and wants to be such a dictator himself? Apparently not.

All of these truths and many others create a situation in which the survival of our American form of democracy, such as it is, may well not survive much longer. If the Congressional Trumpists succeed in destroying our federal government, as they seem hellbent on doing, a right-wing, neo-fascist coup against that government and the constitution that creates it is a virtual certainty. The chaos and hardships that will result from the collapse of our government and constitution will lead millions upon millions of frightened Americans to welcome such a coup.

The inability of the Weimar Republic to cope with Germany’s problems in the late 1920s and early 1930s led to Hitler and his genocidal, militaristic, aggressive regime that got much of the world involved in the largest war in human history and killed tens of millions of people. The inability of the tsarist government to deal with Russia’s problems in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries led to the Bolshevik coup of 1917 and the horror of Stalinist Communism that followed. Such a disastrous turn of events is, I fear, a real possibility that we face in the United States today.

It won’t do to say it can’t happen here, that we’re so different from other people that we would never do what they did. Our country was, after all, built largely through the enslavement and dehumanization of millions of Black human beings and genocide against the American Indians; and we remain a deeply racist culture to this day. We do, after all, maintain a military establishment orders of magnitude bigger than we need. We have, after all, been an imperialist country for most of our existence. We have, even in very recent times, conducted illegal wars of aggression and committed an untold number of murders around the world. The horror of a violent, dictatorial takeover of our country truly is a real possibility today.

Am I overreacting to ordinary politicians and ordinary political policies with which I don’t agree? I don’t think so. The Republican Party today is no longer a normal, legitimate American political party. It is a cult of personality beholden only to Donald Trump. Republican policies today are no longer ordinary, legitimate political policies. They are policies designed only to gain power for the sake only of power and to damage and even destroy the lives of millions upon millions of Americans. The Republican Party used to stand for small government, low taxes, and a large military establishment. Most Republicans no doubt still support those unfortunate policies, but those things are no longer what their party is primarily about. It is primarily about only two things—power for the party and power for Donald Trump. Because that is what the Republican Party has devolved to, it may very well lead to the destruction of American democracy. I pray that it will not happen, but as long as people keep voting for Republicans there is probably no way to stop it. It may, in fact, already be too late.