Clueless
It's time for an update of the old game of Clue.
The Mystery: Who Killed American Democracy?
Possible Solutions:
Mr. Sessions did it in the Cabinet Room with an 1859 Kerrs Patent Revolver.
Miss Ivanka did it in the China Room with a lead purse.
General Flynn did it in the Situation Room with a Turkish saber.
Mr. Pence did it in the Library with the Lincoln Bible.
Miss Huckleberry Sanders did it in the Press Room with a homemade ptomaine pie.
Mr. Kushner did it in the Green Room with a stack of loan agreements.
Mr. Trump did it in the Oval Office with a Sharpie.
Mr. Bannon did it on the South Lawn with a KKK torch.
Miss Conway did it in the Lincoln Bedroom with a candlestick.
General Kelly did it in the Blue Room with a Coast Guard sword.
Donald Junior did it in the Map Room with an elephant tail.
Mr. Putin did it the Red Room with a hammer & sickle.
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Reader Comments (15)
Fox News did it through its feeds into American homes orating Trump University curricula.
Justice Kennedy did it on the "Highest Court in the Land" with the shards of the U.S. Constitution.
Mr. McConnell did it in the Senate with a roadblock. Second choice of weapon is molasses.
The 'merican public did it from sea to formerly shining sea with apathy and ignorance.
The Republican Party did it, out in the open, in front of witnesses, using congressional votes obtained through vote suppression and gerrymandering, after planning the murder in secret, behind closed doors, with fellow conspirators. The murder was ordered by the Fat Man, but carried out by the party. They’ve told everyone that the body will come back to life and be better than ever. Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed she saw the body alive and well, running wind sprints around the Mall. When asked for proof, she told everyone to shut up, shut up, shut up. They think they’re being clever. The deceased’s next of kin have a chance, in 2018, to show them exactly how clever. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Hey, the easy answer from every Repub:
Hillary Clinton did it
I wish I could find any of this funny. You guys are great, tho.
Lewis Powell--long ago in the library with a memo.
Dick Cheney ––grabbed that candlestick and lit our world on fire!
Everyone knows that it was those LGBTs demanding so much that
the government just collapsed.
In a way, Unwashed's entry is probably the most salient.
Democracy is such a funny thing, an unusual experiment, given our primordial "might is right" background.
Or is it?
Perhaps a taste for fairness has always been underlying our interactions with other humans. After all, a fair number of experiments have demonstrated that babies, all under two years of age, and even infants, have a strong sense of fairness. I'm not going to jump into the pool of what's hardwired and what's not in human brains, but a recognition of what's fair and what's not is essential to the development of morality.
Social systems that rely on castes and hierarchies might work for a while (mostly as enforced systems), but I doubt most of those at the bottom feel that's a fair way to organize a society. The heart of the American Revolution was a sense of being treated unfairly by the British monarchy. Far and away, most Americans would have preferred to remain part of the kingdom, but time after time, requests for fair treatment were met with a kick in the teeth, and so, here we are a couple of centuries later singing "My Country Tis of Thee" rather than "God Save the Queen". It was fairness.
And along with fairness, we have a system of government that operates, at least in theory, by the consent of the governed, who choose those placed in roles of power, and can--in theory, again--un-choose them as well. Or at least we used to be able to do that.
Philosophers from Plato on have wrestled with the inner contradictions of democracy. A primary roadblock for many is the issue of education. Allowing the great unwashed (not our Unwashed; the other kind) to vote just like any well prepared, upper class Ivy League graduate seemed (still seems) to some, pure folly. I've read of numerous possible solutions to this, but they all lack the basic element of fairness. In other words, they, none of them, seem to have a defensible moral footing.
Our system seems to have that. Or had it. But the problem of uneducated voters (by this I mean those ignorant of what and who they're voting for) remains. A third of Americans can't name a single branch of government. Another third can only name one, which means probably less than a third can name all three. We have a president who has never read the Constitution. 37%, according to one poll, cannot name single right guaranteed by the First Amendment, and well over half believe the Constitution offers zero protection to immigrants. Due process, anyone?
De Tocqueville has famously said that democracy is an ongoing project requiring renewal by each new generation. If that's the case, we've been getting our asses kicked in that department. It's not that people are stupid (even though we (I?) tend to describe Trump voters as such), but they are dangerously uninterested in the workings of government. I had a conversation a while back with a co-worker who assured me that I was an ass because I didn't know that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution. And wrote it with a little help from Washington who sent him ideas from horseback while prosecuting the revolution. This guy is not a (complete) moron, but his fantasies demonstrate how malleable is our sense, not just of history, although it is that, but of democracy in general.
This guy, and millions like him, wouldn't buy a house or a car without checking it out, doing some basic research, then coming to a considered decision. But a presidential election? Hmmm....I hate her, and this guy sounds like someone who would kick liberal asses, so I'm all for him. He says he's for the little guy. I like that. I vote Trump!
We often hear, especially from wingers, about all who have nobly died for our democracy. Democracy surely is a gift. It's that sense of fairness we had as babies writ large in the adult world. But if that's the case, we've screwed the pooch. As Bruce Springsteen says in "Hungry Heart", "we took what we had and we ripped it apart".
Of course we had help from Fox and friends and the entire Confederate conglomeration of money and power. They tell their constituents that Government is BAD and only THEY can fix it, so vote for them. But, given the terrible turnout in most elections, Confederates decided that the yokels, even the hypnotized ones, couldn't be counted on to show up at the polls. Better to just steal elections. And they do. Gerrymandering is theft. Vote suppression is theft. No other way to describe it.
But even with all that, we can win out. We just have to show up. Look at the recent Alabama election featuring Trump's favorite child molester. Democrats showed up. The right guy won. It's entirely doable.
If people show up.
It's said that 75% of life is just showing up. 100% of democracy is showing up. If you don't, you get 0% fairness, because the goal of the other side is to outlaw fairness, to outlaw morality as a democratic pillar. To outlaw democracy itself.
If we let them. Too often, we do.
So, who kills democracy? Citizens who don't vote, that's who.
The corporate donors did it, with the poison of promised power, using their "free speech"
@ Akhilleus - Hear hear! We have to (HAVE to, I say) vote at each and every opportunity. 2018 will be the year where we either put up or shut up. There are no small elections. Every single one matters.
Aw, I was kidding. You all gave actual, correct answers.
Compulsory Voting.
Universal Franchise.
No exceptions.