America is Not a Democracy
All this angst about the “threat to American democracy” is unwarranted. How can something that does not exist be in any appreciable danger? America is not a democracy and never has been. What is in a “perilous situation” is; the belief in the historical fiction that America was founded as a democratic-republic in the first place. My conservative acquaintances like to say, no, America is not a democracy, it is a Republic. Or, a Representative-Democracy, they might say. Or, Democratic-Republic. But, those are only semantic differences, and merely smear lip-gloss on a sacred pig.
I want to believe that some of the folks who offer those alternate descriptions of America’s form of government or sincere, but ill-informed. But, I also believe there is another cadre of political operatives who throw those terms out like a magician uses misdirection, to divert the public’s attention from the underlying truth. America, we are repeatedly told, was founded as a Republic with Democratically chosen Representatives who were to govern according to the will of a majority of their constituents. To enact policies favored by a majority of American voters was to be Congress’s mandate and that legislation was to become the “law of the land”. Sounds like a wonderful, democratic system… but America has never operated like that.