When Donald Trump takes that inauguration stage tomorrow on Capitol Hill, the whole nation (nay, world) will be watching as he attempts to deliver an address that will unite and inspire us all. It will disappoint most of us. To others, to that forgetful America, it will be a good speech in which he tosses aside partisanship and hostility, showing himself as a true leader, the savvy tycoon that he is.
The forgetful America I speak of are those who have forgotten anything that happened more than eight years ago, unwilling to understand that our problems go back much further, are ingrained deeper than any stretch of eight years could provide. It’s this America that chastises those who oppose and protest a Donald Trump presidency, yet forget the demonstrations that went on when President Obama was elected.
“Obama wasn’t protested like this…we accepted the loss and moved on. We gave him a chance,” they say. He was, however, protested like this, and this, and the loss clearly was never accepted, nor forgotten, which is strange for this forgetful America.
As such, half (less than) the American people fled far to the other end of the spectrum and elected Donald Trump. This isn’t uncommon in American elections, however, and not surprising. It’s always been this game of teeter-totter in which we, as a country, are either up or down – never in between. Following Clinton, it was George Bush. Before that, succeeding Nixon and Gerald Ford it was Jimmy Carter, which then led us to Reagan. Still, this dichotomous exchange of commander in chiefs set to happen tomorrow at our nation’s capital is perhaps the most stark and troubling.
Now, we know that America is not a direct democracy. Rather, it’s a representative democracy.
Let’s assume for a moment that America is not a democracy, at all. It’s a polyarchy, a term coined by Yale Professor Robert Dahl. A polyarchy, as defined by Noam Chomsky, “is a system in which power resides in the hands of those, who [James] Madison called the wealth of the nation, the responsible class of men. And the rest of the population is fragmented, distracted, allowed to participate every couple of years…that’s how the country was founded, as explained by Madison at the constitutional convention, the primary goal of the government was to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”
Today, our government is not the same as it was two centuries ago, as the public majority has won many victories, but (let’s assume) this founding idea is still very much present and intact. There is evidence in the last four presidential elections alone, in which two of them were won by candidates who failed to possess the popular vote. That has only happened three other times in U.S. history, 1824, 1876, and 1888. The staggering number of incumbent reelections in the last thirty years is another sign.
Accepting that America is a polyarchy would mean that Donald Trump is, or was, a member of that opulent minority in which government was meant to protect. Donald Trump has no political experience, in fact he has been touted for his lack of political experience by many of his supporters.
“He’s a businessman,” they say. And yes, he is. He is a businessman who has made a lot of money. However, making a lot of money does not make a person good or just or fair, nor should it qualify them to be president of the United States of America. If that were so, there’d be no need for a government to serve as a proverbial middle-man. If money were what qualified a person to be president of the United States, it would not be a democracy nor a polyarchy. It would be an oligarchy, a plutocracy.
Donald Trump, the shrewd businessman that he is, has openly confessed, bragged, shared that he has bribed politicians in the past. It was a common practice. That’s just good business, right?
Better business would be to cut out that seemingly unnecessary expense and become president yourself, then appoint your other opulent friends to high-ranking positions and go from there. Cutting out the middle-man is good business. Great business if it is, in fact, business, and not, let’s say, a country.
Let’s now assume Donald Trump has refused to completely divest himself from his current business holdings. He’s appointed the CEO of one of the largest oil companies as his Secretary of state, a climate change denier as his energy secretary, and an outspoken opponent of worker protections as his secretary of labor. All wealthy businessmen with little or no political experience – the Trump brand, it seems. Let’s also assume, we’ve also aligned ourselves with Russia and boarded a one-way train backwards to coal and oil, and plenty of it.
In this scenario, it would seem that Trump and his band of opulent friends have taken over the government and are now doing as they please — which would mean, whatever is in their best interest.
This would qualify America as an oligarchy, a plutocracy, right?
However, this is all only possible if we assume that America is not a democracy.
Thank God, America is a democracy.