Has the American experiment in pursuing a ‘mature‘ democracy finally come to an end? I say pursuing (not attained) because this nation never quite achieved anything close to full legal suffrage, at least not until the 1960s. Only slowly, and grudgingly, was sufferage expanded over time … to non-propertied white males, to northern black males, to women, to indigenous residents, and eventually to minorities living in apartheid-riven (southern) states.

Then, on the precipice of universal suffrage, neo- conservative forces soon began to systemically attack the voting rights of newly enfranchised minorities in particular and disfavored groups more generally. Where ‘rights’ could not be legally rescinded, access would be restricted with protocols being introduced to make the act of exercising one’s access to full citizenship difficult at best, impossible in the ideal.

At first, the tactics were indirect. The Nixon administration, for example, passed drug laws biased against minorities followed by the uneven administration of such laws to guarantee arbitrary and selective enforcement. Both the design and management of such narcotic rules were distorted in ways that penalized minority communities. Quickly, disproportionate numbers of black and latino youth had become ensnared in the legal system. In some communities, a fourth to a third of young black males had run afoul of the law before reaching adulthood. Felons, you might recall, generally were not permitted to vote. This systemically weakened civic participation by segments of the population typically shunned by conservatives.

In effect, the collapse of legal apartheid in the 1960s led to an insidious backdoor strategy for keeping undesirables from exercising their rights as citizens. Voter suppression has grown in ferocity and effectiveness in recent years as conservatives began losing the popular vote in national elections. Republicans have purged voting rolls, closed polling places in poor districts, enacted new access impediments at the polls, and imposed absurd gerrymandering practices. It was as if they were trying to recreate an earlier, more primitive version of democracy where only propertied white males would be granted suffrage.

Continued efforts to eviscerate full suffrage and participation in our political life should not come as a surprise. Preserving access to power for and by the elite has a long history in America. Perhaps that is why the Trump crowd wants to whitewash the historical record and prohibit our youth from understanding completely our unvarnished past.

Even at our beginning, despite the high-sounding rhetoric littered throughout our Constitution and related founding documents, the nation was founded by and for the select economic winners. For the most part, suffrage was confined to an acceptable elite … propertied white males. While three-fifths of each black resident would be counted in each state’s population rolls (important to determine each jurisdictions political clout), they could not vote. Also disenfranchised were women, Native Americans, and most males without fortune or property. Only the established white male elite were considered proper custodians of the nation’s future. After all, the rabble presumably did not possess the cognitive wherewithal nor the high moral values essential to the exercise of self-rule. Worse, they might choose to vote in there own self-interest, a frightening prospect given their numerical superiority.

At the end of 1787 Constitutional convention, Ben Franklin asserted that: “I agree to the Constitution with all its faults, if they are such, because I think the general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well- administered, and I believe further that this is likely to be well- administered for a course of years … (but)… can only end in Despotism, as others have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government …”

Ben’s cautionary words reflected deep seated uncertainty regarding the future of this nascent Republic. Deep tensions had run through the consideration of a new Constitution in 1787. All knew that the loose alliance of the semi-independent colonies existing after the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 had been a disaster. Yet, fundamental tensions clouded the way forward to a more coherent nationhood.

A number of questions bedeviled those attending the 1787 constitutional convention. What to do about slavery which seemed inconsistent with nobler sentiments such as all men are created equal? How to balance power between larger and smaller states? Whether any extension of rights too broadly might invite a disastrous rule by the uneducated ‘mob.’ Could some necessary authority be centralized for the sake of stability without sinking eventually into tyranny? And finally, how could opportunity for individual advancement be fostered while preserving the presumed entitlements of the propertied classes? It should be noted that the famous phrase of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ was almost written as ‘life, liberty, and the preservation of property.’

This last issue emerged over and over in early constitutional discussions. Delegates debating the Pennsylvania state Constitution put it this way “… and enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive to the Common Happiness of Mankind, every free State hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property.” Perhaps that early sentiment explains why Pennsylvania is known as a Commonwealth, not a State.

In short, what would become known as the American dream, a place where riches might be freely accrued, could go too far in the minds of some founders. They argued that hyper-inequality was a danger to the common good. At the same time, the opportunity to seek personal success and fortune separated the new America from a rigidly stratified old world. This indeed would prove a tough Gordon knot to unravel.

Fast forward to contemporary times, and not much has been resolved. We have witnessed endless cycles of growing inequality and the concentration of power among the economic elite followed by spurts of intense progressivism …  the reforms of the early 20th century in response to the excesses of the gilded age; the New Deal of FDR in light of the great global depression of the early 1930s; the spurt of idealism in the 1960s (especially during the 87th Congress) after the complacency of the post World War II period.

Since 1980, with the initiation of the Reagan revolution and the full implementation of the strategy outlined by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell (1971), the economic divide between the haves and have nots has widened without interruption. (Note: Powell’s memo laid out a long range plan for the political right to seize control of major institutions and thereby assume more or less permanent control of power).

Over the last four-plus decades, inequality of both opportunity and results has continued unabated. A vast array of data supports the decline of America as this presumed land of opportunity where hard work would be rewarded with personal achievement. Rather, the nation has evolved toward an oligarchy, a place increasingly ruled by an entrenched economic elite.

For example, 10 billionaires recently saw an $800 billion dollar increase in their wealth portfolios over the course of a single year. The top 0.1 percent of the population now commands fully one-quarter of the stock market which continues to rise as the economy wobbles for most Americans. The bottom half of the population command about 1 percent of wealth in the form of equities. Tesla shareholders recently voted to possibly make Elon Musk the first global trillionaire. If this wealth milestone is achieved, and it were considered as GDP (Gross Domestic Product), that sum would place him higher in total resources than all but 21 countries across the globe. That is obscene by any measure.

The concentration of wealth in the hands of the few cannot be divorced from the concentration of political power by the same. When untold billions (perhaps trillions?) are at stake, then why wouldn’t the elite buy politicians or subvert the political process to do their bidding. With unlimited resources at their disposal, combined with the clever use of wedge emotional issues (abortion, immigration, racial animus, loss of tribal identity) employed as classic misdirection ploys to confuse and then secure the support of working-class types, then those in power fully expect to enjoy disproportionate hegemony well above their proportionate numbers. They intend to create a permanent ruling class. If they don’t manipulate the system, the weight of countervailing democratic sentiments would certainly prevail over time. No wonder Elon Musk thought nothing of throwing some $20 plus million dollars into a single state Supreme Court race.

The steady drift to the hard right in recent decades alarmed older Republican stalwarts like John McCain, the last principled Republican to seek our highest office. While running for President in 2012, he experienced a seminal moment during a Minnesota town hall session. A woman in the audience attacked Barack Obama as an Arab and a Muslim. McCain gently took her microphone and said the following in an avuncular manner “… no ma’am. He’s a decent family man (and) a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues…”

Many in the Republican audience booed his conciliatory words. They would have preferred the hate and divisiveness that would soon be fully revealed in Donald Trump’s coming campaign four years later. At least since Newt Gingrich’s 1994 political coup in Congress, hyper-polarization had reached levels where civil communication across tribal political camps had largely ceased and collaborative action seemed virtually impossible.

John would be the final voice of reason in the once proud party of Lincoln. Toward the end of his life he expressed the following: “… they (his Senate colleagues) often had very serious disagreements about how best to serve the national interest. But they knew that however sharp and heartfelt their disputes, however keen their ambitions, they had an obligation to work collaboratively to ensure that the Senate discharged its constitutional responsibilities effectively.” In that vein, he voted to save Obamacare as he was dying of cancer. With immense sadness, he went on to note that … “Deliberations today … are more partisan, more tribal, more of the time than any other time that I remember.” (Note: McCain worked across the aisle, for example once collaborating with Dem. Senator Russ Feingold to limit money in politics.)

It was as if some political Rubicon had been crossed, thereby signaling that an older world where rules and civility prevailed no longer existed. Perhaps the pre-civil war era bore witness to such passions and irreconcilable differences. If so, it took a horrific civil conflict with some 700,000 deaths to restore order and a minimally functioning society.

John Adams once said the following: “A government without power is, at best, but a useless piece of machinery. Power without any restraint is Tyranny.” Trying to walk a tightrope between competing visions of what was right, the founders created a system based on compromise. It was creaky and inefficient, full of checks and balances. Yet, despite its imperfections, it lurched along without succumbing to the tyranny feared by those who launched this experiment with high hopes and many fears.

Now, we are witnessing the most existential and complete threat to this experiment in self rule that many of us can recall. All other issues pale by comparison, from the Epstein files to the state of the economy. Nothing is more important than the question of whether democracy can survive. 

Time and again, Trump has promised an entrenched and permanent Republican rule. He promised it to his Evangelical supporters during his 2024 campaign. Vote for me and you won’t have to vote ever again. It was laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Plan, the outline by which Trump would rule during his 2nd term. And he recently promised his Republican legislators in the Senate as much if they would employ the nuclear option by ending the traditional Senate filibuster. Then, Trump insinuated, he could reopen the federal government on his terms. (Note: In this instance, they did not acquiesce to his demand.)

Ending the filibuster additionally would serve another purpose. He could rule as a quasi-dictator thoughout the period leading up to the 2026 Congressional elections. Let us never forget that German President Hindenberg appointed Hitler as Chancellor on the assumption that  more moderate politicians would keep this loose cannon under control… a form of checks and balances presumed to exist under the Weimar Republic. It took Hitler about 100 days to foment a fake emergency and assume near dictatorial powers from a compliant Reischtag. In the end, tens of millions would perish from the nihilistic, destructive path the Fuhrer subsequently embarked upon. Hitler, too, garnered the support of the industrialists and the money classes, men eager to use his initial popularity to pursue their short term goals. It would prove a Faustian bargain.

The recent elections swept by the Democats have given hope to the center-left. At the same time, ending the government shutdown was accomplished at a significant cost to working class Americans and (once again) to the benefit of the economic elite. The new oligarchs, including the tech brothers, have accumulated egregious wealth through their complicity with our aspiring dictator. They see a path to permanent hegemony, something to which previous elites might aspire but could not quite achieve. This time, they just might grab the brass ring.

There are many theories for why the vast numbers of ordinary Americans might willingly sacrifice self-rule in favor of some dictatorial and tyrannical alternative. On the surface, male working-class support for Trump doesn’t make a great deal of sense. It strikes us as counter-intuitive that any collective would vote for candidates that have never demonstrated any concern whatsoever for their economic or social well-being? This has been the question of the hour.

I do have some thoughts on this conundrum. The direction of my thinking on this question cuts through a complex set of explanations while moving beyond the simple divide between the economic privileged versus we real folk. Rather, it looks to a central aspect of human values … the simple US versus ME dichotomy that may lie at the core of our present political predicament.

This blog, however, is long enough already.. I will jump into my thinking on such esoteric matters in the next edition. So, stay tuned!