Sunday, January 22, 2017

The Unspeakable Truth

There is no chance for egalitarian democracy to recover or even survive as long as the law of the United States - as imposed by the Supreme Court, not by legislation  - refuses to say that lies are not to be protected, that refuses to admit that lies are a danger to freedom and democracy and that a democratic country has an interest in their suppression and that the truth, not lies, are what deserve the kind of protection mentioned in the tragically truncated First Amendment.  

Democracy will always be endangered when ideological groups which deny the political equality of all people, which rank people on a scale of value, that calls for the dehumanization of some people, the denial of the existence of the rights of some people, which advocates the violent oppression and even destruction of entire groups of people are treated the same way, by law, as the most benevolent of egalitarian groups which promote equality, democracy and a peaceful decent life.   The idiocy that refuses to make that distinction and which allows the spread of those anti-democratic ideologies through media amplified hate-talk - again, mostly permitted by the courts, not legislatures - has been what has driven the United States into the arms of Vladimir Putin in the form of the most overt hate-talker ever allowed to occupy the presidency by our defective Constitution in our modern history.   You have to go back to the worst days of Jim Crow, genocide against the Native population of North America to find this kind of a horror show as our chief executive.  

Our Constitution, especially as twisted by the Supreme Court at its frequent worst, is in basic need of major revision to protect the possibility of egalitarian democracy - egalitarian democracy being the only kind that deserves to use that word.  Just because someone wins the most votes in the disgusting Electoral College con job, that doesn't mean the results are democratic, as we saw last November, it has a number of times meant the opposite.  

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