The first thing to say about our democracy is that it is not one. Our system of government is not a democracy. The “framers” of our system, those “founding fathers”, were deeply distrustful of democracy and what might happen if all the people had a voice in our political decision making.
Unitarian Thomas Jefferson’s “all [men] are created equal” was never the embodied intention. Jefferson did not live it and none of the men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 believed they were creating a real democracy. They intended that all people would not participate, only the wealthy, white, male, property owners…like themselves. The rhetoric of democracy shielded a system of power and privilege that has proven remarkably persistent and resistant to change.
You know this and I know this. But with almost exactly one year until the next national election, I am trying to prepare myself to withstand the disregard for truth and the dishonesty of our national discourse.
There are spiritual challenges in navigating a system that everyone on both sides knows to be corrupt. The voter ID laws, the wholesale closing of polling places, the aggressive scrubbing of voting rolls…everyone knows these measures are designed to disenfranchise people of color, specifically. These measures also disenfranchise some of the young and the white poor…also dangerous groups to those in power.
Voter suppression is not designed to protect or enhance democracy. Voter suppression is designed to make sure that our democracy continues to be hijacked by entrenched power and privilege. Everyone, on both sides, knows this.
The US is ranked 57th in electoral integrity in the world. Among “liberal democracies” we are ranked second to last. Our national narrative describes a “City on a Hill” but the truth is that we are far down in the valley of special interest and corruption.
At the national level, Oregon’s votes in the Electoral College are so predictable that they have become almost irrelevant. It is true. Despite the success of vote-by-mail and our near “automatic” voter registration system. At least our state’s efforts demonstrate that a different impulse and a more inclusive objective can work.
But our votes turn out not to matter nationally. That is also true for the voters of California and New York and Massachusetts. Also true for the voters of Mississippi and Alabama and Utah.
What a system.
The British newspaper, The Guardian, is introducing a year-long investigation into the failures of US voting called The Fight to Vote (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/the-fight-to-vote) . Michelle Obama is expanding her high profile effort to encourage, organize and support voter registration and voting (https://www.whenweallvote.org). Taking part is free.
We all know that the future of our “democracy” will be on the ballot next year. There is a lot at stake.
How do we deal with our nation’s retreat from even modest movement toward universal suffrage? How do we deal with the resistance to democracy which is both clearly racist and designed to preserve the power and privilege of the few?
It seems to me that we are called to make the system work while we still can. At least we can reverse the current trajectory toward exclusion.
We are not in danger of losing democracy, because we have never had democracy.
But we are in danger of losing the HOPE of democracy.
As religious people, we know the importance of HOPE.
Blessings,
Bill
P.S. The separation of church and state will prevent endorsement of any candidates by First Unitarian. And we will discourage the wearing of partisan buttons and the like in our space. But we are free to and called to comment on issues from our religious point of view and to work in every way we can to make our system move toward inclusion and empowerment. And so we will.