The US has never been a true democracy. Since its inception, it has systematically disenfranchised entire groups of people because of their race, class, gender, and national origin. Some of those undemocratic levers have been reduced over time as more folks have become enfranchised through waves of legislation, at the state and federal level. By the mid-1960s, with the Voting Rights Act, progressives believed that a more perfect union was possible. But those times seem so long ago.
In 2000, the Supreme Court, in Bush v Gore, decided for George Bush despite irregularities in Florida. And the rest is recent history. 9-11 and the Great Recession followed. Mass surveillance is now taken for granted. And bank bailouts are considered the antidote to economic crises.
In 2016, Donald Trump was elected with millions fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, because Trump received more Electoral College votes. During Trump's term, hundreds of thousands of people died from the poorly managed Covid pandemic. And unemployment reached Depression level numbers before massive bailouts were enacted. Bailouts that put a huge hole in the federal government debt.
Democracy in America has not been a straightforward path. Dred Scott (1857) and Plessy v Ferguson (1896) were Supreme Court decisions that took America backward. The Hayes/Tilden compromise (1877) brought the end to the Reconstruction Era, and the US took several steps back in racial equality.
In the weeks ahead, the US Supreme Court may be tasked with deciding the election in what cannot be called democratic. A body of twelve men and women, all with elite degrees, interpreting the Constitution and the law as they see it. And their decision could affect not just the 330 million folks living in the US, but the entire human world. Will this august body make the decision in good faith and with due respect to the People? Let us pray, and organize peacefully, so that if the case comes to the Supreme Court, the justices make the right decision.
