"I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Apocalypse Now, 1981)
The thing about napalm -- it's hard to ignite. But once it's lit, death and destruction are almost assured. It burns so hot that nominal contact causes second degree burns that are difficult to treat. Anything more than nominal contact and surviving becomes problematic.
The United States has called itself a democracy all these decades while fostering an institutional skeleton that is essentially undemocratic. The electoral college, the Senate, and the Supreme Court are all undemocratic institutions. One man/one vote is not on their list of priorities.
On Sunday, January 9, CNN's Fareed Zakaria hosted a special report, "The Fight to Save American Democracy." Zakaria is behind the times. The United States lost its status and label as a democracy two years ago. We are now considered an anocracy.
The Democratic party, for decades, has tolerated the racist nature of the electoral college, the Senate, and the Senate vetting of the Supreme Court. Now these same built-in evasions of one man/one vote are being used by the GOP to hijack future presidential elections. Well, this was always a possibility. So don't be shocked that protocols designed to evade one man/one vote have become fascist tools.
If you do the math, the biggest effect of the electoral college is valuing white votes over minority votes. And how does West Virginia, with a state population the same as Philadelphia, hold the agenda of an entire nation hostage? Biden won the presidency by eight million votes. West Virginia has fewer than two million people, yet here we are. An American president who won by eight million votes forced to negotiate policy with the don of The Mountain State. The inestimable Joe Manchin helms a populace that is somewhere between 93% and 94% white. Do you really think the Senate and the U.S. government would work this way if the occasional state was between 93% and 94% black? And Washington, D.C., with a population half that of West Virginia, is nowhere near statehood and two senators. How could it be? The D.C. population has a black plurality.
Political napalm has always slicked the skin of the presumed American democracy. Now that this Trump-centric GOP has ignited it, both the democratic facade and the rotted guts of U.S. political institutions are afire. I shed no tears. The democracy-undermining problems have always been obvious, but have never been addressed. Hand me my fiddle. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Bob Dietz
January 11, 2022
