Democracy and democracy II

We, the people of the United States of America, have created a nation whose society has been both the envy and great evil for many throughout the world.  The amount of human progress due to American creativity and technological advancement is almost beyond measure.  The goodwill that the United States accumulated with the rest of the world in joining the Allied cause during World War II, and in helping to rebuild Europe with The Marshall Plan in the aftermath of the war, appeared to validate America as the legitimate “Leader of the Free World.”  But the antidemocratic contradictions which existed from the outset of our republic—slavery, allowing propertied males only to vote in political elections—have evolved in ways which have continued to cripple the American people’s understanding of the liberating promise of democratic philosophy. 

Although a civil rights movement toppled legalized segregation a century after The Civil War ended human slavery in The United States, many of the movement’s beneficiaries remained mired in poverty--and targets of Americans who resented the change.  


The tragic imperial mindset that begat the American colonization of the Philippine Islands at the end of the Nineteenth Century led to a Pandora’s Box of Twentieth Century American nightmares:  the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala and Chile; the destabilization of other democratic movements worldwide; our Southeast Asia war; Ronald Reagan’s Central America Wars and “The Iran Contra Affair.”  The spirit of “Iran Contra” begat the lies of the George W. Bush administration that led us in 2003 into war in Iraq.  


Imperial America’s rejection of the liberating promise of democracy that its Founding Fathers made to the world over two centuries ago has resulted in many throughout the world who are fearful or resentful of democracy, American style.  The American news media sugarcoats the bitter fruit of our betrayal of democratic social philosophy with “fair and balanced” reporting that rarely makes mention of inconvenient historical context or foreign opinion. 

Instead of educating themselves as to why their country has lost its position of moral authority in the world, Americans spend as much of their free time as possible in catastrophic mass consumption, immersing themselves in a shallow celebrity culture and watching any number of popular “reality shows” intent on bringing out the worst in people.  Not surprisingly, violent video games have been a booming American market for generations.

All of the generalizations and justifications that we practice in defending “The American Way” of excessive earthly consumption and human exploitation is the best measure of the distance we remain from being a people devoted to the common human good.  Rather than release humanity from our species-long battle between our animal instincts and the enlightened soul within, “we, the people” have instead become the biggest and baddest of all of the animals to be found within the human jungle for as long as we have been able.  So long as we continue to embrace our social status quo, the American people, will have no real appreciation for the promise of democratically elevated human conduct. 

We, the people, must accept responsibility for our country’s tragic and violent rejection of the democratic spirit at home and abroad in order to end our inhumane social behavior.