I wrote this op-ed for the Recorder back in February 2010, just 10 years ago. It forecast the bitter future that we are living in today. Scott Brown was the first version of Donald Trump.
Republican Scott Brown’s election as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts should teach us a couple of hard lessons about our “democratic” system, and not the ones that we have been reading recently. (Now Brown is the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa.)
The first is that our system is not a total stroke of genius. It’s actually pretty lousy — a first step, which includes having the “king” (president) elected, though he doesn’t have to answer regularly to anyone. And it absolutely does not trust democracy. If it did, the Congressional majority would pass the laws: If, later, the people did not like a law, it would be repealed or changed, either directly or by voting out those politicians who voted it in.
But instead, our system makes it hard to get anything passed to begin with. Thanks to our fabled “separation of powers,” we get a president who has little authority, particularly with Congress. As a result we have — not a democracy but a nothing-ocracy, where all bills are in danger of failing, not just bad ones. It’s not anarchy, or liberty, it’s just stuck with the old laws. The most dynamic of countries, our country, has about the most static political system in the world.
We blindly worship our Constitution, since we have no king or single ancestry to look up to. But we are deluded. If the Constitution makes us frustrated and angry, as it will, we therefore can’t get angry at it, but instead we let our wrath out on the people involved.
Here is one cause of our “hatred” of politicians. Our true feelings are distorted, and those who can use them for their own ends are just waiting to latch onto them. Thus we have a huge number of powerless local Democrats voting not for Martha Coakley but for Scott Brown, who is indeed a nice fellow but does not believe in what those Democrats really believe in, such as humane government. Those voters are not feeling very humane by this point.
Secondly, that’s just one anti-democratic element. We blithely wave our flag of democracy and freedom around the world, while we schizophrenically accept the U.S. Senate’s setup, which allows each state an equal vote regardless of population, like the United Nations which we once resembled. To top it off, we accept the filibuster, which allows 40 percent of that same Senate to rule over the majority. (It’s not actually in the Constitution, but we act as if it is.) A generation ago, a filibuster allowed one-third of the Senate to overrule two-thirds, but today is actually no better, for two reasons: First, most red states still have fewer people than blue states do, and so maybe 25 percent of the population overrules 75 percent! Whew! Second, the Republicans have chosen to use the filibuster for political rather than principled reasons, which means they use it at all times and for no humane reason. It’s enough to drive anyone crazy, and it has.
Maybe we need the Republicans back, so that they can screw things up again as much as they did for eight years before. Sounds like a good idea. Or maybe we need a dictator who can get everything passed whenever he wants it. Is this the real fruit of our wonderful American system?
I suspect that attempting to change the Constitution would end up making things even worse. So what I propose is modest: We and the “pundits” must no longer just passively accept whatever propaganda the Republicans are putting out; even though one can admire their genius at it, and the idiocy of the Democrats’ literalistic response. We must condemn use of the filibuster for politics (to make the Democrats vulnerable this November) — a good argument must be given for each filibuster attempt, or we will ridicule it and its promoters by name. We should probably seek to lower the filibuster threshold from 60 percent to 50 or 55 percent. We must confront any filibuster on the health coverage bill, and maybe win, rather than avoiding one. We must condemn the current know-nothing, do-nothing political style, and instead support action in line with our best traditions. Then maybe we can have an America that acts sensibly and proudly, not sourly and negatively, and can also avoid the crazy traps that have befallen other countries. We need some major living heroes, too: Political or public figures if possible, or movie stars if there is nothing else and they are really good ones.
Hugh Field, of New Salem, is a retired former state data analyst.