Problem of American Democracy: Will It Devolve to Tribalism?
by John Lawrence
The US was settled by western Europeans - white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. All the Founding Fathers and writers of the Constitution consisted of these folks. When the Europeans came here there were 100 million Native Americans. A few years later, due to war and disease, there were only 10 million. 90% of Native Americans were wiped out. African Americans were brought here as slaves and completely subjugated, first due to slavery and secondly due to Jim Crow laws up to 1965. So western Europeans predominated in the US right up to late in the 20th century. From the 1880s to the 1920s many of the immigrants were Eastern and Southern Europeans fleeing poverty. They were preceded by the Irish in the 1850s due to the potato famine. This was the era when the motto, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore" really held true. Then in 1920 or thereabouts the door to immigration was slammed shut. The western Europeans who ran America were afraid that these new immigrants would outnumber them and take over. Tribalism had reared its ugly head. About the same time eugenics was elevated to the point that the Supreme Court allowed the states to sterilize people that they considered undesirable. In Virginia Carrie Beck was sterilized.
Now that African Americans have escaped the bounds of Jim Crow and other Persons of Color have come to predominate in many positions of power, the remnants of the western Europeans who controlled the US up until the last 30 years or so are feeling like they're losing their grip on power. Democracy, as it was set up by the WASP Founding Fathers, only worked when the citizenry were also predominantly WASPs.Although its ideals were lofty, it was never meant to include African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans or other Persons of Color from around the world. The point could be made that democracy only works when it is enacted completely within one tribe, and, when other tribes are incorporated into the community, it doesn't work so well. What is happening today is that the WASP tribe is losing its grip on power, and so is attempting to put democracy aside and just revert to a society in which WASPs hold the reins on power. That is what the Republican party and especially the election deniers are all about.
Election deniers and conspiracy theorists are simply using a dog whistle because they just can't come out and say that what thy are really about is reverting to a tribal state in which they maintain the power that WASPs have always been accustomed to. Donald Trump is just the symbol of this.Election denying is just a euphemism for white western European power. The harsh reality is that the remnant WASPS would rather have an autocracy that they control rather than a true democracy consisting of African Americans and other Persons of Color. They don't want the true history of the US which includes other harsh realities taught in class rooms. The history they want taught is circumscribed to include only Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln and other WASPs but certainly not the realities of African and Native Americans and what happened to them at the hands of the WASPs.
So now what is at stake is the creation either of a true democracy which includes as full citizens and people allowed to enter positions of power those of African descent and other Persons of Color. What is at stake is a true Rainbow Coalition. The alternative is what the election deniers are trying to bring about which is an antidemocratic autocracy in which the descendants of WASPs prevail. That is basically what the Republican party represents - the descendants of WASPs. This is predominantly what the US has always been controlled by up till recently, and they want to continue in that mold. That's why the culture wars are heating up and what is taught in school is so important. If history is taught in such a way that it includes the realities of all Americans and not simply WASP Americans, it is taught in such a way that it does not reflect so favorably on WASP Americans. If non WASPS are given full citizenship or even if they are compensated for some of the inequities they have experienced in the past, this is threatening to the WASPs who would like to maintain the facade that they are good people and have always been good people. What is at stake is which version of reality will predominate in American society and who will be allowed into the Sanctum Sanctorum of American political power. Either the US becomes a true democracy or it reverts to a tribe controlled by the descendants of WASPs only.
