Is There a Path to Unify America as a Democracy?

 

Is There a Path to Unify America as a Democracy?

“"We have never been this angry. We've never been this distrusting. We don’t trust any institution except for the military. We don't trust any people who lead anything right now. We're fed up, we're mad as hell. If I were to summarize in a single word how Americans feel, it's all caps with an exclamation point: ENOUGH! Enough politics, enough lies, enough being ignored, forgotten, betrayed — which is an emotion that breaks society. And however bad you think it is, it's worse. Because I can't sit 15 people in a room that's a little bit bigger than this and have them not tear each other apart."

“"The problem that I have right now, and I don't know how to fix it, is that we don't want to listen to each other. We want to be heard, we want to speak and make sure that other people listen. And when a democracy stops learning and a democracy stops listening, that democracy's in trouble." 

Conservative pollster Frank Luntz, in a July 18th Podcast for The Atlantic

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

Winston Churchill, November 11, 2947

Some people see the schism that is tearing America apart as an urban/rural divide. After all, our foundational documents were created in a small, isolated nation (4 million people in 1776) with an economy that was over 95% rural and agricultural. That is hardly the heavily urbanized superpower of 340 million people, the third most populous nation on Earth, that we have become. The deep rural religiosity – communities dependent on weather for harvests and built around churches as the focal point for human interaction – seems to be a defining glue holding many Americans together. Rural communities have always distrusted “city slickers.” Guns have always been a way of life in rural communities; in big cities they are too frequently the instrumentalities of criminals.

On the other hand, others see a change in generational perception of the world where younger generations communicate through smartphones and social media, and older folks still watch “television.” While older generations have memories of “duck and cover” drills in fear of Soviet communism with nukes, fought wars from Korea through Vietnam predicated on stopping the tumbling dominoes of global socialism and communism, younger generations find job displacement from the rise of AI, an unaffordable housing market, such that some may rapidly be coming to the conclusion as earning capacity is under threat, socialism just might be inevitable. Questions of masculinity vs “woke” femininity were not serious questions until recent realities.

I often hear cries of state secession as the appropriate result of a country too big to govern, splintered by irreconcilable differences expressed by seething hatred, and with elites exclusively controlling the paths to wealth, a situation that is only getting worse. Wealth even pushed through that Big Beautiful Bill that decimated benefits for the bottom economic segment of the nation in order to generate massive tax cuts for the rich. The above chart illustrates the size of the inequity, but monied elites have tied their blame ponies to social and religious issues… deflecting their greed into blame for “others” easily targeted. Immigrants. Godless individuals. The rise of openness among the LGBTQ community, “radical leftists” (generally Democrats, liberals and “out of touch” educated elites). We have created short cuts by which we can dismiss those who oppose our views: name calling and labels that, once attached, negate any opinion that a member of that labeled group might hold.

Cursed with the least amendable (oldest?) constitution in the developed world – and a Supreme Court that, applying the notion of contextual “originalism,” requires constitutional interpretation to follow the historical context that existed when the relevant constitutional provision was enacted – we live within a social nexus that has long since been irrelevant. Flintlock regulation defines the use of AR-15s? And lest we forget the legacy of our Civil War, estimates of resultant deaths rangers from a low of about 620 thousand to a high of 850 thousand. Whatever the true tally, the Civil War accounts for about half of all deaths the US has experienced in all of its wars combined.

The result of the above is that there is no constitutional basis for any state to secede. Even if such a mechanism were to exist and we split apart, exactly how would we divide control of our military, nuclear weapons, the national debt, social programs (like Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, etc.), what would the currencies be, how found federal pensions be assumed, how would our treaties and memberships in international organizations be accommodated, and how would we deal with cross-border travel and trade? How would borders be reorganized, and how would our legal system be carried into the various new state configurations? This just may be one reason why such nation-carving seldom takes place outside of armed conflict.

As the world has become increasingly complex, few Americans grasp the actual workings of AI or how they are impacted by global macroeconomic trends. It’s easier to pick a political leader with simple explanations (accurate or not), or, better yet, a messianic autocrat who can make all the decisions for you and decimate anyone who has the temerity to disagree. Labels really work in this space… to marginalize, demonize and simplify. History began with such structures; monarchies evolved as military technology advanced, but as innovation was completely stifled under one-person rule, new economic structures (like capital aggregating corporations) and political systems that allowed excellence to rise to the top without autocratic control and permission (democracy) became the hallmarks of successful and sustainable governance.

Autocracies are, by definition, self-limiting. That centralization usually works in transitions from governance antiques (warlord fractured states, feudalism, single party/autocrat rule) to modernity. But reality requires the autocracy in place to be right all the time… because replacing that autocrat, by definition, requires massive destruction, by external or internal violent conflict. Still, there is a very real question whether democracy can handle huge nations with massive internal dissent. The debate continues as our factions ponder how to control with or without messy elections.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in answer to the title question, the answer is an unequivocal “no,” but until we figure out a better system, or violence imposes a worse one upon us, we are stuck in a chaotic ambiguity as we search for that path.