The American "Rabble" wavers regarding democracy

© 2017 Peter Free

 

12 February 2017

 

 

An introductory definition — who are the Rabble?

 

We the People.

 

 

Theme

 

It is difficult to defend democracy, when proportionately so many Americans seem not to believe in it.

 

 

President Trump's arguably abrasive character has revealed meaningful splits in America's Liberty foundation

 

Whatever else one thinks of his him, one can respect the transparency of his steam-rolling. I like my adversaries to be so clearly who they are. President Trump demonstrates Capitalism's fundamental greed principles in un-shy form.

 

In that vein, Austin Sarat recently observed that opinion polling about President Trump's "travel ban" had revealed that Americans cannot even make up their minds about democracy's virtue.

 

He pointed to a poll that announced:

 

 

53% of voters say they trust Judges more [than President Trump] to make the right decisions for the United States, to only 38% who trust Trump more.

 

Trump voters [however] have evidently had enough of the Constitution . . . 51% of them think he should personally be able to overturn decisions he doesn't agree with, to only 33% who dissent.

 

© 2017 Public Policy Polling, Americans Now Evenly Divided on Impeaching Trump, PublicPolicyPolling.com (10 February 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

So basically

 

47 percent of Americans evidently think that we should get rid of the Judicial Branch regarding constitutional matters.

 

This presumably includes up to about 67 percent of Trump voters.

 

 

Are these people's hostility toward the Judiciary unreasonable?

 

No. Depending, of course, upon how one frames the question.

 

For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has historically demonstrated a sincere fondness for tearing Democracy down in favor of the Socioeconomic Elite's interests.

 

Those unfamiliar with Supreme Court history need look no further than 2010's Citizens United v Federal Election Commission (510 U.S. 310). That decision allowed moneyed interests to wrap up their self-interested capture of US government.

 

The Court majority reached this conclusion under the conceptually and precedentially laughable guise that the obvious equivalents of graft and corruption constitute free speech.

 

 

The virtues of "thought" — a pertinent general premise about designing Government

 

Holding onto Freedom requires a combination of knowledge, thoughtfulness and intelligently directed action. This is true, Judiciary or no Judiciary.

 

Yet, the mass of anti-appellate judiciary Americans have obviously not much considered what happens when there exist no checks on the Executive Branch's power to do whatever it wants. We have no evidence that Americans, generally, ever think about what is necessary to deliver sustainable freedoms.

 

On that foundation of proud ignorance, it is unlikely anything usefully uplifting will come.

 

Notice for example, in this regard, that about half the public — 46 for, 46 against — wants to impeach the President. Despite the fact that the Constitutional elements required for his impeachment are clearly not present yet.

 

 

A defensible conclusion from these facts about ignorance

 

I have largely concluded that the mass of American humanity is incapable of demonstrating the knowledge and drive that are necessary to quasi-intelligently directed and effective action.

 

We seem not even to be familiar with (or respectful of) the principles that our own society was founded on.

 

 

However — in We the People's defense

 

I do not think that anyone familiar with American history can deny that a government crafted by avariciously inclined slave-owners was likely to evolve into anything much different.

 

American republican democracy was intentionally designed to defend the interests of the propertied class against the Rabble.

 

Full circle.

 

 

A snidely true and pertinent aside about evolution

 

We homo-apes were evolved to wander around in small hairy groups.

 

Amid sparsely populated natural environments, we wrestled omnivorous "eats" from fruits, nuts and the occasionally belabored animal.

 

This is not a particularly suitable genetic-mental heritage for delivering the complex Freedom-based social engineering that is necessary to balance competing interests of masses of people. Especially when the planet's resources are arguably over-drawn.

 

Consequently, I hypothesize that (all things considered) homo-ape masses will always be manipulated toward achieving their alpha apes' interests.

 

 

The moral? — We the People cannot do much against Autocracy with a characteristically ignorant and unthinking public

 

I introduce this conclusion with Benjamin Franklin's disingenuous remark — made after the close of the American Constitutional Convention in 1787:

 

 

“Well, Doctor [Franklin], what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

 

  “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

 

© 1989 The American Historical Review, Volume 11 (1906) (at page 618) — quoted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations, Bartleby.com (at Number 1593) (visited 12 February 2017)

 

 

Right on the nose. And equally wide of the mark.

 

After the indicative reigns of (most recently) King(s) Bush II, Obama and Trump, we have lost a functioning Republic.

 

This loss comes courtesy of (among other things):

 

 

(a) our elitist-oriented judicial branch

 

and in equal part

 

(b) from the mechanics of the very Government that Franklin and Cronies designed.

 

 

If change does come to the Great American Plutocracy, it will most probably be at the hands of another group of doers — domestic or foreign — who successfully manipulate the American Rabble to its ends.

 

Those ends may or may not include We the People's well-being as a measure of success.

 

Poor Homo "saps" americanus. Most of us were evolutionarily destined to live in conceptual and environmental cages of one kind or another. It is mainly a question of how impoverished, in one sense or another, those enclosures are or become.