DEMOCRATIC AMERICA IS BEING TESTED – PART VII
Human beings have developed and progressed far enough to understand that nature does not discriminate, and God does not play favoring. The earth is one community and hatred for one another is erosive and destructive.
People are originally good, Confucius said, and he was right. The populace is ambivalent about races just like they are ambivalent about neighbors, not knowing for sure if they are good or bad until a rumor spreads around. They are susceptible to persuasion and easily led astray by unscrupulous manipulators.
Racism promoting division and mutual hatred is anathema to democracy. Racism itself presents a serious problem. But the real problem is that it has been deliberately used, manipulated, and exploited by extremist political operators to gain advantages.
America’s Democracy is a political creature standing on two legs, one being the Democratic Party and the other the Republican Party. The two-legged Democracy has worked so well and effectively for the last 300 years to create democratic institutions that have in turn protected and defended the wellbeing of Americans.
The Republican Party, or at least its extremist faction, does not seem to respect that system anymore. They have used racism as a weapon to gain power. But the extremists have succeeded in nudging the Party toward extremism. If the Party is not careful, it is quite possible that racism is not just a weapon but will become its philosophy, its ideology. There have been signs that they want to turn Democracy into a dictatorship.
The fate of American Democracy is intertwined with the fate of the Republican Party. To save Democracy, it is imperative that the Republican Party be saved. It sounds ridiculous in the current political environment, but the Democratic Party will have to play a crucial role in saving the Republican Party. It should start with efforts to convince the 74 Million that its policies serve their interest as well.
The Democrats must work with the silent (hopefully) majority of the Republicans including the long idling Republican Establishment, to save Democracy, which political theorists have agreed is the best political system in the whole history of mankind – best for everyone including the extremists.
It is not difficult to imagine what would happen to them if the January 6 riot took place in Moscow, or the defiance of the government’s policy on COVID vaccination happened in Beijing.
