Final Exam

Are we normalizing the 'death of democracy' by talking about it so much? https://t.co/OFTtKZe0fi

— Raw Story (@RawStory) January 4, 2022

Yeah, actually, we are.  Or maybe over dramatizing it is the more appropriate answer.

 Will our democracy become a pretend one, backsliding into "competitive authoritarianism"? As Christopher Sabatini and Ryan C. Berg wrote in Foreign Policy last February, the autocrats have a playbook; those who want to keep their democracies — as imperfect as they may currently be — need a playbook too. We need to learn from other countries where democracy has been challenged, and we need to let the wannabe dictators know that we see their slow-motion coup game and are ready to fight it — by exposing it to the light of day, by strengthening the rule of law and by insisting on the right to vote and then exercising it.

How was it:

When blacks were not even people, but property?

When only white male property owners could vote?

When the "Bill of Rights" applied only to the federal government?

When "individual states of the Union (not the Federal Government) borrowed lavishly from foreign capitalists, especially English ones, to finance such public works are railways and canal building.  The American financial crisis of 1837 forced many states to repudiate their debts...." (from the notes to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, ed. Michael Slater, Penguin, 1982)?

When there was a major struggle over admitting new "slave" states (like Texas!) to the Union, expanding and solidifying (in the case of Texas, where slavery had been illegal under Mexican law) the rule of law forcing some people to be property of other people?

When blacks won the right to be citizens, but not the right to vote (the 15th Amendment wasn't implemented as law until the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by Shelby v. Holder and Brnovich v. DNC? (interestingly, the article in the tweet mentions Rush and Newt's contributions to the decline of democracy, but no mention of the gutting of the VRA. He does mention that the woman Franklin responded to ("A republic, if you can keep it."), was a wealth white woman who couldn't vote.  It's the nearest the whole article comes to the importance of the franchise and who has it, or even to the question of race in America.)

When the natives were forced into "reservations" or to go on death marches?

When Japanese Americans were forced into concentration camps while we fought the Nazis who were...forcing people in to concentration camps?

When we lynched people so freely and openly postcards were printed and sent around by the U.S. Mail? The U.S. Mail run by the same government that at the time was concerned with distributing James Joyce's Ulysses because a character at the end of the book briefly reflects on her sexual encounters?

When four innocent students were gunned down on Kent State Campus simply because they were on campus, and the national reaction was:  "Too bad"?

When there was a police riot in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, and the national reaction was "They shouldn’t be protesting war"?

When protestors marched peacefully in city streets in America for civil rights and equal justice and the national reaction was they were "agitators" and "trouble-makers" and needed to "mind their place"? (A sentiment that only turned because the governments opposed to them unleashed such violence it was sickening, the very sight Dr. King knew would carry his message to legislators and the people.)

In any of these cases, when government was used against people in ways violent and horrific, or in ways that illustrate with crystal clarity the validity of Critical Race Theory, was our democracy a "pretend one"?  Or was it already "competitive authoritarianism"?

Discuss.  Show your work.  Be sure your answer is in essay form.  You have two hours.

(God Almighty Damn!  I wish people would stop being so naive and so self-centered.)