What Americans Have Never Been Able to Deal with Well: Equality & Differences

What Americans Have Never Been Able to Deal with Well: Equality & Differences

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.” 

 Original Text of the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3

In 1787, as our forefathers met, realizing that the existing Articles of Confederation needed a ground-up re-do, they soon knew they needed a bona fide Constitution. The battle between large (land mass) rural states with relatively sparse populations, driven by slavery-supported vast agricultural estates, and smaller states, with stronger trade and other commercial interests with no reliance on slavery, now had to establish representation in the new legislature and how taxes were allocated, which became a North/South differential. This note from the History Cooperative sets the issues:

“After the Great Compromise helped settle the debate between large and small states, it became clear that the differences that existed between the Northern and the Southern states would be just as difficult, if not more so, to overcome. And it was largely due to the issue of slavery. … In the North, most people had moved on from the use of slaves. Indentured servitude still existed as a way to pay debts, but wage labor was becoming more and more the norm, and with more opportunities for industry, the wealthy class saw this as the best way to move forward. .. Many Northern states still had slavery on the books, but this would change in the following decade, and by the early 1800s, all states north of the Mason-Dixon Line (the southern border of Pennsylvania) had banned human bondage.

“In the Southern states, slavery had been an important part of the economy since the early years of colonialism, and it was poised to become even more so… Southern plantation owners needed slaves to work their land and produce the cash crops they exported all over the world. They also needed the slave system to establish their power so that they could hold onto it — a move they hoped would help keep the institution of human bondage ‘safe.’” The 3/5 compromise still afforded the South proportional representatives in the new population-driven House of Representatives, and the two Senators per state regardless of population gave the South the comfort they needed to accept a new constitutional republic.

But colonialism still defined Europe, and it was the United States that built its global face on the notion of free navigation of international waters, even as slavery – hallmark of colonialism (Haiti defeated Napoleon and banned slavery in 1804) – continued its dark hold on the Americas. The Civil War and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments notwithstanding, the biases of lighter-skinned people increasing against those with increasingly darker skin was a global phenomenon, adding religious and cultural bigotry along the way. The explosion of our post-WWII civil rights era, watching as the last vestiges of colonialism vaporized… it was America’s quest for equality, the emphasis on democratic values and freedom of movement, that hyper-accelerated the United States into the premiere position of economic and political success on Earth.

Unfortunately, political opportunism, the reality of the rest of the world’s catching up, and the rise of new foreign manufacturing plants competing against older US plants with roots in pre-WWII tech slammed into a nation that was increasingly relying on its past, willing to borrow heavily to maintain a standard of living, assuming its superiority would last without massive new investment. Even our reaction to the Soviet Sputnik success in 1957 – spurring education and investment in technology – was not enough to keep the post-WWII political witch hunts (like the McCarthy era or federal troops escorting children into schools) from redefining who we are and should be.

The post-Vietnam War era saw a fear-response in under-educated America, well past the GI-Bill educational spurt that was starting to rebuild our excellence… until racism, a powerful “domino theory” movement, and blame driven xenophobia became the tools of local, then national politicians to assure Americans that our greatness was maintenance free… that we could not fall. Instead of “we are more alike than we are unalike” (Maya Angelou’s famous “Human Family” verse), Americans eschewed the effort of rebuilding and opening opportunity… and elected politicians whose only skillset was vituperative-driven blame and self-aggrandizement.

We sit today foundering from an ill-advised WAR that will not end in a better world, one where we have reversed centuries of fighting for free navigation of international waterways and fighting efforts to maintain colonial rule, where blame and bias are the most powerful political tools in use by American political leadership. We have the weakest, least effective and most democracy averse President in our nation’s quarter of a millennium history, one who equates himself with Jesus Christ (see above 4/13 Truth Social post by Trump himself). The King of Divisiveness, the Ego of National Destruction and the most dangerous leader on the planet.

I’m Peter Dekom, it is bitter irony that Donald Trump’s model for a “desirable” illiberal democracy, a man Trump strongly supported openly and frequently – Hungary’s PM Viktor Mihály Orbán – went down to a landslide defeat after 16 years of imposing Trump’s dream set of policies that literally tore Hungary apart.