Courtesy of wikipedia.org
A friend shared a letter with me from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. In it, he outlined a course of political action for the future. (Dec. 31, 2024) Like many of us, he sees the next 4 years as rocky ones for the country. To protect our democracy he makes 3 proposals: 1) that we rid ourselves of dark money in our elections; 2) that we expose the oil industry’s responsibility for climate change, and 3) that we set ethical standards for members of the Supreme Court.
Sheldon was correct to draw our attention to the tasks that lie ahead of us, but he was wrong to blame Democrats for the outcome of the last election. Kamala Harris reached out to Middle America with plans for affordable child care, lowering prescription drug costs, and helping individuals invest in a home or small business. Donald Trump was silent on these issues. As a billionaire, he has never relied on benefits like government-assisted health plans. On the contrary, his campaign proposed reductions in social programs like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Unreasonable proposals like these may explain why he lost the popular vote and won by a plurality.
Even so, it’s difficult to understand why so many working Americans voted against themselves and for the rich in the 2024 election. Their reward has been to see the President-elect nominate 13 billionaires for his cabinet and to watch him remain silent when Elon Musk labeled his supporters as contemptible fools.
Admittedly America’s test scores don’t refute Musk’s opinion. But, writer Kali Holloway places the fault with the country’s dread of diversity. …time and again, [we have}] fought back, often violently, against multiracial Democracy. (“The Sting of Betrayal,” by Kali Holloway, The Nation, Jan 2025, pgs. 14-15.)
Could she be right? Do Americans fear democracy more than they fear oligarchy?
Most of us know that while The Declaration of Independence stated that all men were created equal, our Founding Fathers had no intention of extending that equality to slaves or women. That hypocrisy is one we have absorbed without scrutiny or embarrassment. Another falsehood is that these men were Christians who imbued our Constitution with religious principles.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others were not Christians but Deists. They believed in a Creator but not an ever-present one who listened to prayers. Their God endowed mankind with reason and the benefits of natural laws then walked away. Reason, not religion, would allow the species to fend for themselves. Fending for themselves–that was the meaning of freedom. (American Gospel, by Jon Meacham, Random House, Large Print, 2006, pg. 40.)
The basis for their belief came from a passage in Leviticus, 25:10. It granted liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. Religion, our founders agreed, might provide grounds for moral conduct, but it wasn’t necessary. “A virtuous heretic should be saved before a wicked Christian,” said Benjamin Franklin. (Ibid, pg. 37)
In today’s world, which puts so little stock in reason, a person might wonder if our Founding Fathers were naïve in their assumptions. True, Aristotle also gave the nod to reason thousands of years earlier. He assumed that being a frail species, our human condition made us social animals. We relinquished some liberties and bowed to rules in exchange for safety in numbers.
Who created and enforced the rules in a society would depend upon the type of government–monarchy, theocracy, feudal, totalitarian, or democratic, for example. Our forefathers chose to give power to the people. However, that precious gift has tarnished over time. Social animals we may be, but we are also selfish brutes. Our darker angels leave their imprint on the communities we build no matter how good our intentions.
We live in an epoch when greed and blind ambition masquerade as patriotism. Shame is forced to run for its life. Joni Ernst, Senator from Iowa is a recent victim of our shrinking mores. Having taken up arms against our external enemies and despite being a victim of sexual assault, she has bent to political pressure and agreed to support Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary– a man who has distinguished himself as a drunk and a sexual predator. What are we to make of such courage? Does a seat in the Senate dining room mean more to her than honor?
As each patriot falls to corruption, we see with clearer eyes why this nation is at war with itself, at war with the poor, and ethnicity, and willing to see the planet pillaged to the point where it can no longer sustain us. We are the contemptible fools, grasping at short-term gains as we plunge into an abyss.
Most contemptible of all are the nearly 90 million registered voters who failed to cast ballots in the 2024 election. They complained that no candidate represented the interest of the working class. That defense is ignorant and untrue. What’s more, that attitude is another example of moral corruption. It is borne of the notion that unless democracy provides a benefit to the voter, that voter has no obligation to the country.
Those who hold this view fail to realize that the FORM of government matters. Democracy IS worth defending. To become indifferent to its value is to allow tyrants to commandeer the levers of power. If selfishness is what these fools admire, then let them consider the consequences of their neglect. At the feast of Avarice, no one but the privileged will attend.
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