Democracy dies in disinformation

Hoping this newsletter brings a little clarity

Here’s a reflection on where our democracy stands today. While I’m not a huge advocate of the libertarian politics of the Economist, I think it’s striking that the well-respected magazine no longer considers the US a full democracy. In an article which I put on my google drive for you from March 21 of this year, they wrote,

Even with Mr Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2016 and 2020 elections, America still scores highly in its ability to hold legitimate elections. (Despite the pro-Trump insurrection before Mr Biden’s inauguration, America got the president that it voted for.) On political participation (ie, voter turnout) and electoral process and pluralism (ie, free and fair elections) America scores around nine points out of ten. Instead, it is America’s political culture and the functioning of its government that pose the biggest problems. Within the culture category, America scores poorly on political polarisation and general support for democracy. A recent survey by Pew, a pollster, found that more than a quarter of Americans think that an autocracy—in which a leader can bypass Congress and the courts—would be a somewhat or very good form of government.

They also noted that 80% of Americans think our politicians don’t care about us, which facilitates apathy about voting among all but the most passionate voters. I wish that instead it stirred people to fight against autocracy, but because of the slow creep of disenchantment, that’s not the case. I think it’s important for us to be aware of this cultural reality in order to consider how to counter it.

(That said, according to 538.com, younger voters who didn’t vote in the last election were more likely to name “barriers to voting” than disenchantment or apathy. That is also worth paying attention to. On July 5, this newsletter talked about voting rights legislation that could address this issue, in case you’re interested in learning more.)

History and democracy

In today’s newsletter on democracy, I don’t have a story specifically curated. I just want to quote one of America’s greatest poets, Langston Hughes.

Hughes, born in 1901 two generations removed from slavery, grew up hard, and he was one of the first Black poets to write his poetry to and for working Black people. He remains acclaimed for his insights into the lives of people in his community and their relationship to the US. And as I work on this series, his poem, “Let America Be America Again,” keeps kicking around in my head, because it longs for a return to justice and democracy and simultaneously names that such a democracy was not actually accessible to most people. It was published in 1938, amidst the Great Depression, so it evokes immigrants and Black people and so many left out of the American promise.

Here is a stanza I hope to keep close to my heart as I think about what I can learn from our history, and I hope it helps you in your reflections, too.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

Spotlight on a Pro-Democracy Ancestor:

Because he has shown up a lot in my year in Philadelphia, I want to lift up one of the greatest minds and advocates for true democracy, WEB DuBois. He’s been important in my life for many years, and the first political book I ever read by a South Asian American was Vijay Prashad’s The Karma of Brown Folk, written 100 years after DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk, because Prashad felt that we needed to engage the history of Black Americans in order to understand our own place in this country. The Souls of Black Folk still stands up 121 years after it was written.

DuBois was the first Black man to get a PhD from Harvard, and when he was asked about it, and I love this flex so much, he famously said, “the honor, I assure you, was Harvard’s.”

In addition to his sick burns, though, WEB DuBois co-founded the NAACP in 1909 because he believed that if a group stood any chance of equality under capitalism, they needed equality of voice in the democratic process; if Black people couldn’t vote in the South, he asked, what was to stop Southern legislatures from taxing Black people into perpetual economic disadvantage?

DuBois was one of the most brilliant voices on racial equality and on democracy…and on capitalism, actually. During the Red Scare, DuBois was handcuffed and put on trial by the Department of Justice in 1951 for petitioning to ban nuclear weapons, and while he was acquitted, he eventually moved to Ghana and died a Ghanaian citizen.

I wanted to name this movement ancestor because his commitment to democracy got him vilified by the US government, and he chose democracy over an oppressive government. I didn’t choose this story for that reason; mostly I wanted to share his awesome shade about Harvard, but I keep sitting with what DuBois may be telling me about what type of democracy to fight for, and what not to put up with.

I’d love your thoughts on this whole newsletter but particularly anything DuBois might be saying to you as a movement ancestor and an alienated pro-democracy ancestor.