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Call Me an Alarmist if You Will

By September 16, 2022No Comments

Thoughtfully, please consider the following:

  • Any nation can be brought down by either a revolution or a coup d’état.  But only democracy can vote itself out of existence. 

There are no policies that are unique “democracy policies” except that of voting.  Democracy can withstand high or low tax policies and significant or insignificant economic regulation.  What it cannot tolerate and survive are attacks upon voting. 

President Biden’s speech lacked the ringing tones of a Lincoln, FDR, or JFK, even though it was precisely right thing to say. Republicans have no policy programs on which they are running in 2022. Instead, this lack of policy proposals explains why the only issue on the ballot in 2022 is democracy itself.

Today’s analogies to the Civil War are inappropriate and misleading. This is not 1861.  The Southern attack on Fort Sumter was not a revolution in an attempt to bring down democracy.  There was no democracy in the slave-holding South to overthrow.  It was simply an attempt by Southern states to withdraw from the Union so these states could continue owning human beings.

Today’s Republican Party confronts the same conditions that the Whig Party faced in 1854.  Over the issue of slavery (a case of equality), the Whig party split into the American Party (pro-slavery, anti-Catholic, anti-Masonic, anti-immigrant) and the more traditional Republicans, with Lincoln and other anti-slavery advocates creating the latter.

There is significant doubt whether a revolution in the United States could succeed today.  A successful process depends upon which side the military takes.  If the military remains neutral or sides with the government, the attempted revolution or coup will be unsuccessful.  For two examples, consider the Egyptian army during the “Arab Spring” and the Turkish attempt to remove Erdogan.  Once the military was called into play, the jig was up.

The reasons are simple.  First, the balance of firepower between the army and revolutionaries today is far from that employed in the French Revolution.  The balance of firepower between the military and the revolutionaries at the Bastille was relatively even.  That is not the case today in the U.S. where the firepower balance heavily favors the military.

There is a second reason.  Revolutions and coups require an organization far beyond mere blabbering over the Internet.  The “Arab Spring” is again a prime example. The Arab Brotherhood tried to take control, but they only lasted until the army decided to intervene. Their rallying in the streets in response to a call over the Internet was temporarily successful in bringing down the Egyptian government. Still, they hadn’t a clue about how to organize and operate a government once they gained power.

The so-called “revolutionaries” in the United States are disorganized and will fail.  Should they turn to violence, the American army would crush them.  (Consider why Trump did not call in the National Guard during the insurrection on January 6.)  

However, this does not mean democracy is safe since the people could vote for a demigod like Trump and provide that demigod with a rubber-stamp legislature to do his bidding and courts to confirm his rubber-stamp legislature.  If this were to happen, democracy would have voted itself out of existence. 

That is why the 2022 and 2024 elections are crucial to the future of democracy in the United States.  It is risky to draw parallels with history, but consider what happened as the Weimar government faced a nation that was suffering from the following.

  • Past glory (the wars of unification); 
  • A shift from an agricultural to an industrial nation; 
  • A lost war (World War I); 
  • A “Big Lie” (Germany won the war, but politicians and Jews stole it); 
  • A vengeful peace treaty; 
  • Uncontrolled inflation;
  • New technology for communication (printing press, radio, film) that offered widespread access to ideas not usually part of the social discourse; 
  • Two failed coups (the second led by Hitler, after which he proclaimed the Nazi Party would proceed to bring about a revolution only through democratic means); 
  • A “golden age” between 1924 and 1928, followed by the Great Depression of 1929. 

Throughout the life of Weimar, there was constantly organized violence in the streets.  In essence, Germans had “lost their identity.” Hitler and the Nazi Party offered voters a new one.  In 1932, the Great Depression resulted in the Nazis becoming the largest party in the Reichstag (though not a majority).  Hitler was elevated to the chancellorship in 1933, and Weimar’s democracy ended.  The people of Germany had voted democracy out of existence; Hitler’s revolution through democratic means had succeeded.

These same conditions can be seen affecting a significant portion of the United States population today.  The past glory of World War II, the Cold War, a technological revolution (electronics) that changed the meaning of labor, lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, inflation arising out of the COVID pandemic, and the “Big Lie” of a stolen election. 

We are missing only one condition – organized violence in the streets.  I leave it to you to carry through an analogous projection of the future of democracy in the United States.