What Democracy Are We Trying to Save, Exactly?
Our lives are so undemocratic, any “democracy” left in our politics rings hollow.
Our Progressive golden girl Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines yesterday for saying that American democracy might not exist ten years from now. Eyeing the encroaching tide of Republican gerrymandering and widespread goose-step obedience to Trump’s Big Lie, I share those concerns. The threat of a fascist authoritarian take-over of the United States government is very real, and very alarming, and I too feel the rousing call to rise up and defend American democracy.
But how would I do that, exactly? What options do any of us ordinary folks really have to defend American democracy as we know it, let alone to deepen it? I’m not a Supreme Court justice who could rule on gerrymandering. I’m not a political representative. I don’t run a media empire. I’m not a CEO of anything.
In an interview on Russell Brand’s Under the Skin last year, Edward Snowden made the case for reimagining how we think of conspiracy. He and Russell discussed how the most egregious examples of elite conspiracy play out in full view every day. The real conspiracies are not in Q drops and pizza parlor back rooms, but in the places where all of our representatives agree with each other. If the only viable…
