Anniversary
of January 6 Assault on the Capitol in Washington,
DC
Attempts to Hide Crisis of U.S. Democracy
- Anna Di Carlo -
 Workers
across the U.S. are taking action to demand
their rights. Above, Alabama miners march in New
York City, July 28,
2021 declaring "We Are One."
A feature of the situation as 2021 ended is the failure of attempts to
hide the crisis of U.S. democracy. When President Joe Biden opened and
closed the Summit for Democracy he convoked in Washington, DC on
December 9-10, 2021 with the participation of some 100 governments and
others, both he and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to "challenges"
the U.S. faces when it comes to democracy. While they focused mainly on
voting and the deepening crisis of a system failing to deliver the
human rights being demanded worldwide, they did not fail to issue
threats against all those who do not submit to the U.S. "rules-based"
international order.
Biden began the Summit by putting forward
the U.S.
Constitution as the model for "democratic values."
He also made it
clear that democracy is a matter of ideals, not
actual reality. He
said U.S. "democracy is an ongoing struggle to
live up to our highest
ideals and to heal our divisions; to recommit
ourselves to the founding
idea of our nation," that "all women and men
are created equal, endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable
rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness." This
talk is in conditions where human rights and the
right to live and be are under brutal attack as
governments at all
levels refuse to guarantee rights to health care,
housing, education, a
livelihood and safe living and working conditions.
Furthermore, neither Biden nor Harris speak to the
fact that the
Constitution enshrines a structure of inequality,
including keeping the
people out of power and the rich in power, evident
from the days of slavery to today.
Speaking to the
crisis facing liberal democracy, Biden said that
"perhaps most importantly and worrying of all" is
"the dissatisfaction
of people all around the world with democratic
governments that they feel are failing to deliver
for their needs." He
tried to hide this reality by saying democracies
are not perfect, are
hard work, are fragile, etc. He, like Secretary of
State Antony Blinken and Harris, then tried to
reduce the issue of
democracy to voting. The desperation of the ruling
circles is such that
they believe that if only the right to vote were
recognized nationwide, the U.S. democracy would go
back to being the
best in the world.
Biden said, "My administration
is going to keep fighting to pass two
critical pieces of legislation that will shore up
the very foundation
of American democracy: the sacred right of
every person to make their voice heard through
free, fair, and secure
elections."
If problems could be sorted out by
passing laws, what is the
problem? Once laws do not suffice, then come the
police powers and the
threats of war and especially the use of nuclear
weapons.
The fact is that despite Constitutional Amendments and numerous laws, such as the 1965 Voting Rights Act, simply being able to vote is blocked and no explanation is given. In 2013 even the Supreme Court repealed sections of the Voting Rights Act.
History
shows that yet more legislation is not going to eliminate the many ways
voters are blocked from voting, whether through limits and requirements
of voter registration, arbitrary elimination from the voter rolls by
election officials, rigged drawing of district lines (gerrymandering),
the blocking of the equal right to be elected, for third parties to
register and run candidates and much more. U.S. elections have long
been widely known to be neither free nor fair.
The focus on voting is
also meant to divert from what Biden himself
admits: the broad dissatisfaction worldwide with
the failure and
dysfunction of liberal democracy and its
institutions.
At the Summit for Democracy, Biden
recognized that the world is at a
turning point. His response however is to deny its
material basis and
what it reveals and instead try as he might to
unite the contending factions behind what he calls
his Presidential
Initiative. Biden said:
"My fellow leaders, members
of civil society, activists, advocates,
citizens: We stand at an inflection point in our
history, in my view."
In mathematics, an inflection point is a point of
a curve at
which a
change in the direction of curvature occurs. In
business it is a time
of significant change in a situation; a turning
point. In life it refers to points where events
and decisions take one
in a different direction, altering the course of
at least one aspect of
one's life.
Biden said: "The choices we make, in my
view, in the next -- in this
moment are going to fundamentally determine the
direction our world is
going to take in the coming decades. Will
we allow the backward slide of rights and
democracy to continue
unchecked? Or will we together -- together -- have
a vision and the
vision -- not just 'a' vision, 'the' vision -- and
courage
to once more lead the march of human progress and
human freedom
forward?"
"The vision," as he puts it, is one where
"the march of human
progress" is to be blocked by using his
Presidential Initiative to
institutionalize different organizational forms to
attempt to maintain rule
by the oligarchs in general and the U.S.
imperialists in particular.
Harris also spoke to this turning point but in a
different
manner.
She said: "I believe our world is at the start of
a new era -- an era
with new challenges, an era with new
opportunities,
an era that is defined by interconnection and
interdependence. In this
new era, I believe that democracy is our world's
best hope not because
it is perfect but because of its principles,
because it delivers for the people. Democracy
protects human rights and
promotes human dignity. It is a means to create
peace and prosperity."
It is as if the U.S. is not waging wars, has
sorted out the
problem
of rising poverty, homelessness and attacks on
human rights which are
reaching new levels of genocide on several
fronts. What such assertions serve to achieve is
to highlight the
crisis of credibility and legitimacy in which the
U.S. democracy is
mired. Making clear that her reference is to the
defunct
liberal democracies, Harris said, it is "of urgent
concern that
democracy is presently under threat and, for 15
years, has been on the
decline."
Evidently, the broad mass movements in
the U.S. for equality and
rights and against the racist government and
police killings are not
considered part of democracy and nor are the
demands of the countries which affirm their right
to be and oppose
foreign interference in their internal affairs.
The rise of a people's
democracy is to be averted at all costs. The broad
and
growing resistance of the working class, among
Indigenous peoples,
immigrants and refugees, farmers and youth are
also not to be permitted
because they are described as part of the
decline of the democracy. Both the battle for
democracy and the battle
of democracy are nonetheless the order of the day
in which both the
quality and the structure of democracy so that it
is to the people's advantage is emerging ever more
clearly.
Workers
shut down the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges,
March 5, 2021,
demanding
recognition of their rights and of their critical
role in keeping
people safe.
This dismissal of the people is
further evident in Harris' closing
remarks, where she echoes Biden's many statements
saying "democracy is
the government." She says, "As we go
forward, let us do the work that democracy
requires. Let us go to work,
let us deliver together for the people."
The
separation between the people, those governed, and
those
governing is evident. Those governing, constitute
the "we" and the "let
us" as in "Let us deliver together for the
people,"
refers to the government.
The issue on the minds of
millions worldwide when it comes to
democracy is not to defend the likes of Biden or
Trudeau or their
rivals for power or any of their counterparts in
other
countries. They are acutely aware of who decides
all matters of concern
when it comes to questions related to the economy
and all that entails,
war and peace, politics, culture and the very
fate of the natural and social environment. It is
the people who pay
the price for this retrogression and they are
heeding the call of the
times to Make Way for Renewal.
In
the face of the clash between concrete conditions
and authority,
the effort to stop the advance of democracy is to
no avail which is
what makes the current situation very dangerous at
the hands of a warmongering ruling class. In
Biden's concluding remarks
at the Democracy Summit, he thanked everyone for
"renewing our
dedication to the shared values that are the root
of our national and international strength." It is
precisely these
pro-war, anti-social values that the ruling elite
has trouble promoting
and justifying because they do not accord with the
conditions and are being rejected, along with the
institutions that
uphold them. Again focusing on voting and the
values of the rich, Biden
said:
"We're affirming the democratic values that
are at the heart of our
international system and which have been the
foundational elements of
-- for decades -- of global growth and
prosperity."
The other shoe then dropped when he
affirmed the U.S. role of
deciding who is and is not upholding the values.
"We're committed to
working with all who share those values to shape
the rules of the road that are going to govern our
progress in the 21st
century," Biden said.
These are the values that are
enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and
others like it based on the same Covenant Thesis
which creates a
fictitious person of state which allegedly stands
above the fray and can sort everything out if you
follow the rules of
the road.
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 1 - January 9, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2022/Articles/M520017.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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