Is the US a Democracy or a Gridlocracy?
by John Lawrence, June 9, 2020
How is the US a democracy when one man can vote against an antilynching law so that it never gets passed? The law that would make lynching a Federal hate crime passed the House almost unanimously, but failed to get passed in the Senate due to one man - Rand Paul. It only takes one Senator to quash a bill and prevent it from becoming law because of the filibuster. This is what makes the US not a democracy but a gridlocracy. There is another way that legislation passed by the House which is the people's chamber never sees the light of day and that is Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate. It is up to him whether legislation passed by the House even gets considered in the Senate. That is the antidemocratic power that one man has. How can you say that the US is a democracy when one man has the power to say which legislation is even considered? Even if it passes both Houses, the President can always veto it which makes the US system much more antidemocratic than a parliamentary system.
The bill called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. It comes to pass as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement. But you see the US political system for what it is when one man can prevent anything from becoming law. That's precisely the reason there is no gun control legislation even though opinion polls show that a majority of the American people want it. In March 2018, 67% of Americans supported stricter regulation of firearms sales, according to a Gallup poll with a margin of sampling error of
+/- 4% at the 95% confidence level, the highest in any Gallup survey since 1993. We'd have it IF the US were a democracy. It's not. The gun control industry has bought the votes of at least one Senator, and that Senator or Senators will always filibuster. The US political system is archaic and needs to be changed. It's not that big a deal. You don't need a revolution to change a Constitution. Most advanced western democracies have done it to bring their political systems up to date. Instead, the US Constitution is treated as sancrosanct and must never be changed sort of like the Bible. Meanwhile, time marches on and other nations march past the antiquated United States.
The New York Times reported:
As Congress prepares to wade into a contentious debate over legislation to address police brutality and systemic racial bias, a long-simmering dispute in the Senate over a far less controversial bill that would for the first time explicitly make lynching a federal crime has burst into public view.
The bill, called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act after the 14-year-old black boy who was tortured and killed in 1955 in Mississippi, predates the recent high-profile deaths of three black men and women at the hands of white police and civilians that have inspired protests across the country. It passed the House this year by a vote of 410 to 4, and has the backing of 99 senators, who have urged support for belated federal recognition of a crime that once terrorized black Americans.
So the American political system is not only undemocratic, it's racist. It's the main reason that hardly any progressive legislation was passed during President Obama's 8 year term in office. Corporations lobby Senators - it's basically legalized bribery - to pay them off so that no meaningful legislation ever gets passed except if it's in their interests, and their interests are always about money. The article continued:
Kamala Harris rose to object, delivering a seething broadside against Mr. Paul as she noted that even as they debated, mourners were gathering to honor George Floyd, the African-American man who died last week after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
“The idea that we would not be taking the issue of lynching seriously is an insult — an insult to Senator Booker and Senator Tim Scott and myself,” she said from across the chamber floor, referring to the South Carolina Republican who helped write the bill and is the party’s lone black senator.
“To suggest that lynching would only be a lynching if someone’s heart was pulled out and displayed to someone else is ridiculous,” she added. “It should not require a maiming or torture for us to recognize a lynching when we see it and recognize it by federal law and call it what it is, which is that it is a crime that should be punishable with accountability and consequence.”
American democracy has been hijacked by monied interests who can afford to pay off Senators and Congressmen and women as well for that matter. Legalized bribery insures that nothing of any consequence will ever get done in America whether it is racial justice, economic justice or political justice. Can this system be reformed? Perhaps it can, but the reform should start with the Senate and the role that the leader plays in deciding what legislation even gets considered and to the elimination of the filibuster.
