{"id":2555,"date":"2020-12-16T15:18:14","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T15:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=140032"},"modified":"2020-12-16T15:18:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T15:18:14","slug":"a-notable-death-in-2020-american-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/16\/a-notable-death-in-2020-american-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Notable Death in 2020: American Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
True story: I used to be a crazy Civil War buff when I was 5 years old. In the year when most normal kids were getting Beatles records or the latest loud offering from Mattel, I asked Santa for my blue Union soldier uniform. I even made my dad get off the Pennsylvania Turnpike and take me to see Gettysburg on our annual pilgrimage to my Midwestern grandparents. Little did I know back in 1964 that I\u2019d get a chance in my lifetime to write about America\u2019s second War Between the States.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know what else to call it when 18 U.S. states \u2014 that\u2019s seven more than the 11 that seceded in 1861 and formed the Confederacy \u2014 go all the way to the Supreme Court to have my votes and about 7 million others here in Pennsylvania, and those of three other states, thrown out for absurd reasons<\/a>. It can only be read as, we don\u2019t like who won.<\/p>\n Something has clearly gone off the rails when at least 18 people with enough smarts to get elected attorney general of an American state sign onto a lawsuit that managed to be frivolous<\/a> yet also argued to end democracy as we\u2019ve known it these last 233 years or so. Or when nearly two-thirds<\/a> of the Republican members of the U.S. House trip over each other to sign on. Or when dozens of state lawmakers in Harrisburg or other capitals fall into line <\/a>trying to invalidate the results in their own state.<\/p>\n \u201cThis party has to stand up for democracy first, for our Constitution first and not political considerations,,\u201d a Michigan congressman, Rep. Paul Mitchell, who voted for Trump last month, said on Monday<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s not about a candidate. It\u2019s not simply for raw political power and that\u2019s what I feel is going on, and I\u2019ve had enough.\u201d Mitchell\u2019s words came in a letter announcing that he\u2019s leaving the Republican Party to serve as an independent, but what\u2019s stunning is not that he did this \u2014 but how few other GOPers feel the same.<\/p>\n And so 2020 continues to be the ultimate glass-half-empty-half-full Rorschach test when it comes to how one views the health of American democracy. The half-full crowd can certainly point to the record number of citizens who voted,<\/a> despite both a pandemic and ridiculous voter suppression laws in some states, and a bevy of Republican-appointed judges and state and local GOP election officials who held firm that these votes must be counted.<\/p>\n Sometimes it might seem silly to call it \u201ca war\u201d because in a modern media culture it plays out in such weird ways: a patronizing Wall Street Journal op-ed<\/a> questioning whether to call Jill Biden a doctor, or a moral panic<\/a> when Cleveland\u2019s baseball team is no longer called the Indians. But behind those online kerfuffles, America\u2019s conservatives feel a duty to defend a system of authority \u2014 with foundational elements of patriarchy and white supremacy \u2014 they see as under assault from a more diverse nation and growing demands to share power.<\/p>\n