![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
When I read of such things...
Sep. 15th, 2009 10:37 pm...as insurance companies considering domestic violence a "preexisting condition", or congressmen claiming that essential reform of the financial system is politically impossible, I wonder if we have a political system that is irretrievably broken.
The danger is that people will eventually lose patience with dysfunctional government and start wishing for someone to come along and replace it with something that works. This happened in France in 1789, in several European countries during the first half of the twentieth century, and in the Soviet Union and its satellites beginning in 1989. Can it happen here?
In Russia, communism gave way to chaos and the eventual rise of nationalist authoritarianism led by members of the "organs of security" (the KGB). By contrast, Italians after World War I turned their backs on ineffectual parliamentarianism and embraced fascism, while in Spain in 1936, a disputed election led to three years of civil war and almost four decades of conservative military dictatorship.
Bickering politicians and lobbyists need to understand, particularly in hard times, that patience has limits, and constitutions and laws are respected only as long as they are perceived to work to society's benefit. A Supreme Court so unwise as to declare that the Constitution guarantees large corporations the right to buy elections, for instance, simply calls for its own liquidation, most likely along with the Constitution it purports to defend.
The Bush years have shown us that lofty principles have few defenders when people feel threatened. We have seen racial and religious profiling, mass surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment, and torture used with impunity in the name of collective security; the leaders of a post-constitutional order would no doubt build upon and extend these precedents, it seems to me. I cannot say what form such an order might take, but my gut tells me militant nationalism and conservative Christianity would likely play starring roles. We seem to have in our midst not only an angry white fringe too easily swollen by ranks of the newly unemployed, but also a military largely divorced from the civilian population and too easily alienated by years of misuse in unnecessary and interminable conflicts abroad. Will we awake one day to find among us a Cromwell? A Franco? Will the various militia movements coalesce around something like classic European fascism? Or will a President simply order the army to occupy Washington and arrest his or her rivals?
I fear that unless the present system begins to demonstrate that it still works, something like one of these scenarios lies not far in our future.
The danger is that people will eventually lose patience with dysfunctional government and start wishing for someone to come along and replace it with something that works. This happened in France in 1789, in several European countries during the first half of the twentieth century, and in the Soviet Union and its satellites beginning in 1989. Can it happen here?
In Russia, communism gave way to chaos and the eventual rise of nationalist authoritarianism led by members of the "organs of security" (the KGB). By contrast, Italians after World War I turned their backs on ineffectual parliamentarianism and embraced fascism, while in Spain in 1936, a disputed election led to three years of civil war and almost four decades of conservative military dictatorship.
Bickering politicians and lobbyists need to understand, particularly in hard times, that patience has limits, and constitutions and laws are respected only as long as they are perceived to work to society's benefit. A Supreme Court so unwise as to declare that the Constitution guarantees large corporations the right to buy elections, for instance, simply calls for its own liquidation, most likely along with the Constitution it purports to defend.
The Bush years have shown us that lofty principles have few defenders when people feel threatened. We have seen racial and religious profiling, mass surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment, and torture used with impunity in the name of collective security; the leaders of a post-constitutional order would no doubt build upon and extend these precedents, it seems to me. I cannot say what form such an order might take, but my gut tells me militant nationalism and conservative Christianity would likely play starring roles. We seem to have in our midst not only an angry white fringe too easily swollen by ranks of the newly unemployed, but also a military largely divorced from the civilian population and too easily alienated by years of misuse in unnecessary and interminable conflicts abroad. Will we awake one day to find among us a Cromwell? A Franco? Will the various militia movements coalesce around something like classic European fascism? Or will a President simply order the army to occupy Washington and arrest his or her rivals?
I fear that unless the present system begins to demonstrate that it still works, something like one of these scenarios lies not far in our future.
