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One of the foundational myths of the United States is that a group of brilliant men gathered together in Independence Hall in Philadelphia and signed a Declaration of their Independence over the absentee landlords and ruling monarchy of George III of England.
Like many myths, there’s a lot left out of this one. That the signers were all white men; that the nation they were “founding” had been occupied for thousands of years by the First Nations people; that many of these men declaring that “all men are created equal” owned other human beings; and on and on. And that’s all true. But we shouldn’t allow all that to ignore what a profoundly revolutionary act that Declaration was.
Up until then, countries, city-states, empires, and so on were almost exclusively ruled by one supreme monarch. A king, emperor, shōgun, khan, chieftain, potentate, kaiser, Caesar, pharaoh, tsar, or what have you. Almost always male, and usually with what today we would call “unchecked executive power”. The power to control all citizens, the armies, the navies, the land, the income, of whatever they ruled over. Sure, there were ways people could claw back some of that power, but in the main, for thousands of years, we had Kings. (They didn’t call Jesus “President of Presidents”, after all.)
Yes, yes, there were exceptions: The Roman Republic period, the Greek “democracies”, and so on. But they were exceptions. Humanity had Kings.
To say having the idea to throw that all over and create a democratic republic and run a country “by consent of the governed” was a revolutionary concept is understating it. Yes, I am well aware that the founders drew on many historical precedents. But look at how countries were governed in (say) 1760, and how they’re governed now. Our experiment influenced the world. Heck, why do you think France sent us the Statue of Liberty?
I’m not going to go into all the ways we have failed of our promise over the last ~2.5 centuries, as most of us are all too grimly aware of slavery, segregation, the near-annihilation of the First Nations people, the antisemitism that closed our doors to Jews fleeing genocide in WWII, Japanese internment camps, imperial ambitions in places like The Philippines, and on and on. We are not even remotely close to perfect. But it’s important to remember, especially today, just how genuinely revolutionary our declaration was.
This is especially poignant now, with one of our major political parties clearly determined to turn back the clock on all the good things we’ve accomplished.
Starting in the Reagan era, I became convinced that the Republican Party was dead set on taking us back to the 1950s. When women didn’t work (or rarely), heterosexual marriage was the norm, non-straight people were forcibly closeted, Christian supremacy was unquestioned, Blacks were segregated, and the country had a huge majority of European descent. When straight white cis Christian men held sway.
Starting with the Bush II era, it seemed more like 1919, just before the 19th Amendment was passed, giving women the right to vote. They also weren’t much enamored of the 17th Amendment and direct election of Senators either, though, so maybe 1910 was a better target date.
Unfortunately, by stripping the most important provision of the voting rights act, overturning Roe v. Wade, making corporations equivalent to living human beings and money equal to speech, and almost too many other Supreme Court decisions to mention, it became clear in the last two decades that the GOP really wanted us to go back to the 1850s rather than the 1950s. Before Black people got “uppity”, when rich folks could do pretty much what they wanted, when women were oppressed, beaten, raped, and killed with impunity, and when the government was constrained from helping anyone but a straight white cis Christian man.
Boy, was I wrong.
With their ruling in Trump v. United States (and just take a moment to ponder the title of that ruling; Trump verses the entire United States!), the Supreme Court has embraced what Dick Cheney and his cronies from the Nixon Administration called “the Unitary Executive”, also sometimes known as the “Imperial Presidency”. They have given literally unchecked power to one person. (They would obviously prefer it was on straight white cis Christian man): The President. The President can do anything so long as “in their official capacity as President”. And given they very carefully didn’t say what that covers, they’ve basically turned the President into a monarch. And no, I am not exaggerating.
The Supreme Court, in their right-wing zeal to attain permanent and unlimited power for themselves, have take us back to 1750. I can barely contain my rage.
When I was 12, this country celebrated its Bicentennial; two hundred years of contiguous government. It was something to be proud of, and I was hoping at the time I would make it to the Tricentennial.
Now, I don’t think the country will make it that far. I hope I’m wrong; I fear I’m not.
Random Blather 