Can We Still Call Ourselves a Democracy?
Today, we should have been observing a transition of power as Congress prepared to certify the results of the December 14, 2020 vote by the Electoral College, electing Joe Biden as president. Today, we should have been acknowledging the progress our country has made by electing Georgia’s first Jewish and Black senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. The real victory for America would not have been who won or lost, but a peaceful transition of power from one set of leaders to another, keeping with a history of more than two centuries. The fact that we could not do this -- that we could not have this transition of power -- is a tragic failure of the American system. It is possible that the United States of America is no longer a democracy; this behavior is bordering on authoritarianism. The leader of the world’s most powerful nation has frequently engaged in mobilizing domestic terror, and today is no exception. Today, we think back to Donald Trump’s tweets of “Liberate Michigan,” “Liberate Virginia,” and the kidnapping of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer by conservative extremists angry with the governor over her coronavirus policies. Donald Trump has been the ringleader of the mob that is currently assaulting our United States Capitol building and democracy. During the presidential debates of 2020, Trump was unable to unequivocally condemn white supremacists on national TV, and today, he signs his tweets aimed at the violent rioters with “thank you!,” and “WE LOVE YOU.” For a president claiming to be the leader of the “party of law and order,” things sure seem to be out of control in Washington D.C.
The Republican party has undergone a complete transformation over the last four years, with recent events snowballing into the complete separation and the creation of the Trump-Republican party. What started as one wealthy man campaigning for president in 2016 has morphed into supposedly-democratic leaders advocating the undermining of our democratic systems and the fueling of false conspiracies about voter fraud four years later. Donald Trump’s actions today are not surprising, as two months after the November 2020 general election, the president still has refused to concede or congratulate president-elect Joe Biden. Now claiming that the election results for Ossoff and Warnock are fraudulent, Trump and his supporters clearly have no boundaries of what they are willing to do to stay in power. Shots have been fired into our Capitol as our lawmakers hunker under their desks praying for their lives. Today, our country inches further and further away from the confines of a true democracy.
President-elect Joe Biden addressed the nation today, demanding that President Trump end the “siege.” The New York Times and Washington Post, among other news outlets, have gone from calling the Trump supporters in D.C. “protesters” to calling them a “mob.” This full-fledged spectacle of mob mentality is obnoxiously characteristic of the new political party that has been created over the last four years.
Moreover, activists are furious with the clear show of white privilege - white cops posted pictures with the rioters, not condemning their actions, but letting them continue to storm the Capitol building; if these protestors were people of color, the police would not be so inclined to hold their fire. Activists point to how the Black Lives Matter protests were treated by conservatives and Trump supporters. Our democracy is crumbling before our eyes. Our lawmakers are in peril. Our so-called president is thanking the mob for its support. What will it take to get us to walk back from mob rule to democracy?