It is easy to take democracy for granted.
But the last several weeks have brought this idea into focus in a way that has not been seen, I would argue, since the Second World War.
It is not too great a stretch to say that the biggest winner in the U.S. election was, in fact, democracy.
Obviously, we know that there are still many hurdles to be overcome before President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris take office in January 2021, but at least the runners are on the right track.
Or are they?
There is no doubt that Canada and indeed the whole world held its collective breath as all awaited the election results (overshadowing B.C.’s own election results to a great extent) … A sense of disbelief creating stunned confusion as we were all forced to realize that almost as many Americans wanted someone like Donald Trump as their leader as wanted he’ll-do-for-now Biden.
It really became clear that Trump had managed to sell his lie that he was the champion of the working white male (which also endeared him to more than half of white women who voted) and that only through him could the American Dream be kept alive for workin’ folk, as the vote count continued.
You just want to shake these people for failing to see the truth at the centre of Trump-mania, which is that he is all about making the rich richer. His four years in office did next to nothing for the middle class and even less for anyone in a disadvantaged position.
The reality of today’s America is that it is absolutely not a democracy. Some experts describe it as an authoritarian capitalist nation, while others say it is an oligarchy.
It is a nation where a small cadre of the very wealthy and some big corporations use their money and their power to influence states through the use of their lawyers, lobbyists and even the think tanks they fund. They use their power to break unions, ignore environmental regulations and more, and there are virtually no avenues to hold the rich to account.
Fostering democracy anywhere that has such a great divide between the wealthy and the rest of us is almost impossible.
Consider the fact that the elite rich (I’m talking Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and the like) have increased their wealth by over 30 per cent during the COVID pandemic so far. The rest of us—not so much.
Also consider that the value of our real wages has not improved in 40 years while the rich simply get richer and richer with little to no trickle-down effect.
The super rich in the U.S. received generous tax cuts under Trump, none of which translated into better pay or conditions for workers.
Trump also actively campaigned to discredit the idea of truth, whether that was aimed at science or journalism or even just facts on current events. He turned politics into an emotional us-or-them scenario, effectively thwarting democracy.
Watching the U.S. over the last four years, it has been abundantly clear that capitalism thrives in an authoritarian regime—benefitting only the few.
And when in 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations and unions could spend money both on “electioneering communications” and to directly advocate for the election or defeat of candidates (although not to contribute directly to candidates or political parties), the floodgates opened and democracy was dealt yet another crippling blow.
Said President Barack Obama at the time: “There aren’t a lot of functioning democracies around the world that work this way. Where you basically have millionaires and billionaires bankrolling whomever they want and however they want and in some cases undisclosed. And what it means is ordinary Americans are shut out of the process.”
And lest you think that this type of behaviour is a U.S.-only phenomenon where the rich and powerful influence government, consider the recent WE scandal, or how the Irving family impacts the Maritimes. (The $10-billion Irving dynasty operates 250 companies in oil, forestry resources, shipbuilding, and most of New Brunswick’s newspapers.)
Fortunately in Canada, unions and corporations cannot donate to political parties or local candidates. But they can fund third parties registered with Elections Canada, which conduct activities such as election advertising and voter outreach.
I hope the election in the U.S. is a wake-up call for everyone who values the ideal of democracy, but more than that it must be a call to action for all of us that we cannot just be citizen activists on election day—we need to stand up and speak out for the issues that are important, such as addressing climate change.
We owe it to each other to do this and to the ideal of democracy.
