The Genius of American Democracy
The future of the world depends on people – and countries – who can learn, adapt and change.
In 2016, after Donald J. Trump won the most powerful office in the world, I wrote, “I guess we’ll find out if the Founders really were geniuses, after all.”
A bit of Dark Water has passed the bridge since then.
Let’s just say up until three days ago, it looked like The Forces of Darkness were about to end The World’s Oldest Democracy. You could almost see the gleam in the eyes of Putin, Xi, Un and Roger Stone.
Joe caught the vid. He was talking slower. He kept saying he hadn’t lost a step and that he was still running, but he was walking even slower. Many of us kept holding on, hoping he would turn it around.
Then, Joe pulled the most Jedi move of the 21st Century: He lifted up his light saber and disappeared.
In his place is a young(ish) Black woman who makes Old Joe Kenobi and Darth Trump look … old.
In doing so, Old Man Joe demonstrated the genius of American Democracy: Its ability to evolve and thrive.
Contrary to what many of the old white people of the 20th century believe, the future of the world depends on people – and countries – who can learn, adapt and change. It belongs to people who can be loyal, but who can also realize that doing a thing that doesn’t work over and over is insanity. The future belongs to those who can live sustainably, appreciate individual differences, and who believe relationships are NOT zero-sum-gain transactions.
Those things are all rosy takes on a truly Idyllic Democracy that makes it so beautiful to look at, like the Lincoln Monument or cherry blossoms in the springtime.
But like the rose, the only way to preserve such delicate beauty is with some thorns.
And thanks to decades of civil rights gains in our democracy, a woman named Kamala Harris has those thorns.
“As a young prosecutor when I was in the Alameda County District Attorney's office in California, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse,” she told people assembled at the former Biden-Harris Election HQ in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, July 22. “Donald Trump was found liable by a jury for committing sexual abuse. As Attorney General of California, I took on one of our country's largest for-profit colleges and put it out of business. Donald Trump ran a for-profit college, Trump University, that was forced to pay $25 million to the students it scammed. As district attorney, to go after polluters, I created one of the first environmental justice units in our nation. Donald Trump stood in Mar-a-Lago and told Big Oil lobbyists he would do their bidding for a $1 billion campaign contribution. During the foreclosure crisis, I took on the big Wall Street banks and won $120 billion for California families, holding those banks accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was just found guilty of 34 counts of fraud.”
And there you have it. Donald Trump – the convicted felon who thought he hacked the American Democracy with his special brand of Fearful Idiocracy – will NOT get away with it.
What is “it”?
That stuff Harris mentioned above, AND attempting to violently disenfranchise 81 million voters who in 2020 voted to throw Trump out of office. Harris’s prosecutorial chops also might show themselves at the Supreme Court majority, which has barely stopped short of selling its opinions on Ebay. I think by now, it’s safe to acknowledge that the one-two combo of Biden and AG Merrick Garland weren’t setting the world on fire with its milquetoast pursuit of justice.
A lot of people are saying Kamala Harris is the answer for the darkness that was settling over the American Experiment.
As the Former Cave-Dweller-in-Chief repeats constantly, “Who knows, folks?”
I DO know that our Founders are looking smarter every day.