Congressional Indifference to Mass Shootings proves that American “Democracy” is Working the Way it was Designed to Work: Undemocratically
Since the slaughter of about 20 five and six year olds at Sandy Hook elementary school, polls have shown that about 89 percent of the American people want stiffer background checks before one is permitted to buy a gun. However, the Sclerotic United States Senate consistently says No.
Of course, people on the left are distressed at this failure of American Democracy. They rightfully note that things such as the filibuster are impediments to democratic action. However, they don’t begin to fathom the depths of the American system’s antipathy to democracy.
The nation’s hostility to democracy is so deep-seated that the school system, political leaders and the LILY-LIVERED PHONY LIBERAL MEDIA have contrived to keep the American mind deluded by a web of lies. They have succeeded in fostering the misconception that the Second Amendment gives Americans an unqualified right to bear arms.
Query: How many of the common Bozos who babble on idiot boxes, and write in rags that masquerade as journals, have ever read the Second Amendment??? This is what the Second Amendment says:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Have any of the ignoramuses of the Republican Party noticed that large introductory clause about a well regulated militia. Very simply, it is very easy to interpret the second amendment as meaning that people shall have the right to bear arms if they are a member of a militia meant to provide for the common defense.
Also, why do supporters of the NRA continually HALLUCINATE that the second amendment says that the right to bear arms is unconditional and that we must not erect background checks because we must not infringe on the rights of good and honorable murderers and psychotics to have guns? The fact that a right may exist does not mean that that right is absolute and untrammeled.
Also, since the Second Amendment is so grammatically ungainly and awkward – read it again if you must -- it is quite possible that different drafters wanted to say different things, that this is a composite of contradictory intentions and consequently is a muddled and monstrous verbal abortion.
(Although the Supreme Court recently said that the second amendment did give Americans the right to bear arms, a) the Supreme Court once said that its decisions in Dred Scott and Plessy were the law of the land and b) what the Supreme Court says is the Law is in large measure a function of what factions control the Supreme Court when it makes one of its supposedly oracular determinations. Finally whether a right exists or not does not dispose of an issue as a right might be very limited or very expansive)
Also, why do CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC and CNN and the other snub- nosed named media outlets, with snub-nosed, midget minds, discuss only the same few surface stories of the news all day long and never, ever discuss a few elementary aspects of constitutional interpretation.
The answer is our repugnance to democracy. To keep the people impotent, we keep the people ignorant. Some right wing elites in the Country seem nostalgic for the politics of the Austrian Empire’s Prince Metternich who said that the masses are inert.
The American people are so ignorant that they are oblivious to the most basic outlines of our political system. Of course, most educated people know that the electoral college is undemocratic because it gives the residents of smaller states more influence than the residents of larger states. (Although the House of Representatives is roughly based on population, every state in the nation has two Senators), but few educated people realize that this criticism is just the tip of the iceberg. Very simply, the constitution does not state how a State’s electors are to be chosen. Although every state in the nation provides that the candidate who wins a state’s popular vote will get that state’s electors, or representatives to the electoral college, the constitution does not mandate this. Indeed, during the political foodfight in the aftermath of the 2000 election, some Republican big shots argued that the State Senate of Florida, under republican control, should simply vote to allocate all of Florida’s electoral votes to Bush. The current system, which provides that a state’s electoral votes are chosen by that state’s popular vote, is simply a lucky development which could be revoked as the forces of right wing reaction mount.
Also, American hostility to Democracy is not politically impartial. It knows exactly what it is fighting against. It is fighting against the poor.
More specifically, it works like this: It is designed to make seemingly liberal presidents fail so poor people will become disgusted with the political process and not vote or vote for republicans. In practice, this meant that Obama’s slightly progressive ideas (His progressive inclinations were very tepid and in large measure an illusion fostered because Americans assume that blacks are left of center) were mangled from the start, and consequently Republicans did great in the off year elections of 2010 and 2014 and Donald Trump won in 2016.
American hostility to democracy has the same well-springs as modern British hostility to democracy. I say modern British hostility to democracy because I am not referring to hostility on the part of the royals or the nobles; I am referring to the hostility of British capitalists to democracy.
Lord Salisbury said that democracy threatened wealth. He feared that the yearning to make men free and to equalize their positions in society ineluctably led to the confiscation of the riches held by the few. (He said this at the end of the 19th century, when conflicts between workers and industrialists began to assume center stage in the political discourse) More recently, Margaret Thatcher, the Mother Mary of hardline right wing American capitalists, said very much the same thing.
In part, Americans are not aware of American resistance to democracy because Americans believe that only one segment of America is denied democracy. Some people on the left, in the course of expounding on the sins of American racism, speak as if America has been fine and dandy to all white people and that all white people are privileged.
People are so sure that black people and other racial minorities are the only victims of injustice that they are completely oblivious to the wholesale deprivation of the rights of some white people. For example, an excellent article in the New Yorker -- which, if I recall correctly, I read in the Summer of 2001 -- noted that in Alabama, in the beginning of the 20th century, a statute was passed requiring that in order to vote one had to have cash assets of 10 K dollars, a princely sum in those days.
But of course most people don’t know this, the left doesn’t mention this and perpetuates the notion that it is primarily a movement dedicated to articulating the grievances of only blacks and women and the undemocratic Trumpers may inherit the nation.