The Gloom of American Democracy Imperilled in the Partisan Divide

"We often think that what we should be waiting for is fascists and communists marching in the streets, but nowadays, the ways democracies often die is through legal things at the ballot box — so things that can be both legal and antidemocratic at the same time."

"Politicians use the letter of the law to subvert the spirit of the law." 

Daniel Ziblatt, political scientist, Harvard University

 

 Reuters   President Joe Biden

"Our democracy held. We the people endured. We the people prevail. For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election -- he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol."

"But they failed. They failed. And on this day of remembrance, we must make sure that such an attack never, never happens again."

U.S. President Joe Biden

"The American spirit is being tested. The answer to whether we will meet that test resides where it always has resided in our country, with you, the people. And the work ahead will not be easy. Here in this very building, a decision will be made about whether we uphold the right to vote, and ensure free and fair elections. Let's be clear. We must pass voting rights bills that are now before the Senate and the American people must also do something more."

"We cannot sit on the sidelines, we must unite in defense of our democracy."

"In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to our prosperity and posterity."

"That is the preamble of the Constitution that President Biden and I swore an oath to uphold and defend and that is the enduring promise of the United States of America."

U.S.Vice-President Kamala Harris 

Have Americans ever been more polarized? The promise of a great coming-together with the election of a Black President in Barack Obama held great promise; if America could finally yield to the premise in their own Constitution that "all men are born equal", recognize the leadership quality in a bi-racial American, bring him to executive office and anticipate a rebirth of the nation, a cleansing of the past, a bi-partisan Congress to advance the United States of America into the future, the world's ills could also be solved. 

 

"Yes we can" was the optimistic spirit of the time, but "Yes we did" failed to come to fruition. Under the Obama administration the Democrats and Republicans gave short shrift to working together, surrendering opposing ideology for the good of the whole. The response to two terms of an Obama administration gave birth to a Republican presidency introducing the world to uncertainty and the spontaneity of an uncouth character shattering the comfort of the West to be by a stable, resolute mind of intelligent repute.

That single term led to a completion of the polarization of values held dear by Americans who had cultivated the myth of standing strong together against the evil empires of the world, leading the free world to victory, and the unfree world to democracy. With the consequential election of an aging Democratic leader of uncertain virtues mindful of the creeping influence of vociferous progressive voices hating the America that is and urging on an America that never was, a series of judgement failures has voters howling in rage.

Illegal aliens stream into the United states; over 1.7million in 2021. A fearsome epidemic of looting and record-breaking levels of killing splurges across major urban centres with a dozen major cities breaking annual homicide numbers in 2021. Black Lives Matter which rampaged and rioted with the death by police mishandling for a minor misdemeanor lit the fuse of public rage that turned to trepidation when Black criminals became untouchable even by Black police chiefs and Black mayors.

The mantra of 'defund the police' gained traction, demoralizing police forces who stood back giving free rein to the civil threats, the looting and pillaging, the street violence suddenly unleashed in numbers barely imagined. The racial tensions that the killing of George Floyd resonated throughout the world, his death and ignominy brought to U.S. society on the global stage had his visage writ large as the ultimate U.S. victim, a symbol for all Black Americans, stinging U.S. pride in itself as a just society ridden with Black crime.

Gun sales surged as society became further estranged in the countless deaths caused by an unseen plague out of China flooding the world and extracting from the United States record death numbers. That same United States mounted a scientific defense through its fabled enterprise in science and entrepreneurship counter-flooding the world with life-saving vaccines against a pathogen that refuses to be tamed. And then the Biden administration shocked itself and its allies by its cowardly withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving the vulnerable in the clutches of the Taliban.

 

57 percent of Americans polled by Fox disapprove of their new president's focus on and response to crime; 80 percent are extremely concerned over the crime surge, with 21 percent placing the blame on a "breakdown of moral values", with 15 percent feeling weakened criminal penalties the cause, 13 percent the availability of guns and 12 percent decreased police funding as reasons for unprecedented crime levels plaguing American society. 

 

Andrew Harnik/AP   Rioters gather outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan 6, 2021

Little wonder Republicans still gather around the promise of a returned Trump administration in 2024. Donald Trump had a single term as president before he was vaulted out of the position as most powerful person in the world community; president of the great United States of America. President Joe Biden stands a fairly good chance of celebrating one pathetic term in office before he too is ushered out of the Oval Office, having done perhaps more than his share of humiliating his countrymen and women and baffling America's foreign allies.

Close to two-thirds of independents fail approval of the Biden administration on all counts. In 2021 more Americans perished from COVID than did in 2020 under the previous administration. Hispanics, most of whom voted Democrat, no longer approve of their management of the nation's needs. America, no longer a civil-minded nation, where crime and violence are taking over the streets as lawlessness prevails past the 'defund the police' demands, is in peril, and its allies and friends look on with alarm and sorrow.

But there is guaranteed satisfaction in the situation from other sources. From countries that have presented as potential harbingers of global destabilization, countries whose ideological roots and pervasive antagonism to the West and to the democratic ideal, look on with both disbelief and curiosity and no small amount of gloating as they see internal discord and societal breakdown within America as it tries desperately to find its moderate middle and a return to sanity.