Or is it already broken beyond repair?
Two nations, divisible, with liberty and justice for some
Six years ago, these headlines would have sounded like a science-fiction movie. Yet with every passing year, we seem to be creeping closer to this unimaginable reality. And the pace is accelerating. What are the odds that the United States of America survives its current state of dysfunction and division?
I put the odds around 50/50.
If you think I’m unduly pessimistic, I invite you to look at two facts about how our country is changing. These are not red-state or blue-state talking points. They are clear and present realities.
1. Changing demographics
Whether or not you believe in the Great Replacement Theory – the supposed plot to replace white Americans with minorities and immigrants – the racial and cultural makeup of the country is rapidly changing. White birth rates continue to decline, while the birth rate of immigrants and minorities continues to rise. In 2022, the majority of Americans under the age of 18 are already non-white. The future is already written.
Republicans know these changes spell trouble for their party. Immigrants and minorities tend to dislike the GOP and vote Democratic. Just as troubling for Republicans, their base of white voters is rapidly aging. Young people, taken as a whole, disdain the GOP, and as older voters slip into the sunset, younger voters are replacing them. This spells serious trouble for Republicans. In raw numbers, their base of support of steadily declining, with no end in sight.
2. The changing balance of power
While the number of Republicans is declining, their power is growing. There are two main reasons for this. First, is the peculiar nature of the constitution. Second, is the willingness of Republicans to used scorched-earth policies to seize and hold on to power.
If you look at every branch of government today, the Constitution gives Republicans a leg up. Because every state – regardless of its population – has two senators, Republicans states with small populations can wield outsize control, and even dominate, in the Senate. The Electoral College also favors small Republicans states, granting each two electoral votes based on their Senate seats. That combined advantage in the Senate and the electoral college then allows Republicans to control the makeup of the Supreme Court – because justices are chosen solely by the Senate and the president. These peculiarities of the Constitution, at least in our time, have thus combined to deliver power into the hands of the minority.
Making matters worse, Republicans have used whatever tactics available, ethical or not, to increase their power: extreme gerrymandering in the House of Representatives, voter suppression, and the refusal to even consider, let alone confirm, judges nominated by Democrat presidents, a policy that has installed right-leaning judges at all levels across the country, including the Supreme Court, where its 6 to 3 conservative dominance is deeply out of step with the rest of the country.
If you’re Republican, you might think that we’re fighting a war for the future of our country and that all’s fair in love and war. But playing dirty has consequences, and the current imbalance of power, combined with Republican chicanery, has the capacity to lead our country into a very dark place.
The problem with minority rule
As I wrote this article, I tried to think of countries around the world that have recently been governed by minorities. I’m sure I’m missing some, but here are the first four that came to mind.
South Africa
Here a repressive white minority controlled a black majority. Apartheid failed miserably after decades of repression and violence. Even today, South Africa continues to be a poor country plagued by inequality, violence, and crime.
Iraq
Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, a Sunni minority, used intimidation, imprisonment, and murder to rule its Shiite and Kurdish citizens. Hussein started a pointless war with Iraq that killed half a million people, and all the above predated our post-9/11 invasion, the Sunni-Shiite Civil War, and ISIS.
Syria
Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority continues to rule Syria despite having less than 15% of the population. Assad’s brutal repression led to a Civil War starting in 2011 and continuing to this day. The war has seen the intervention of the Russian Federation, the use of bunker-busting bombs to destroy underground hospitals, and the use of nerve gas against civilian targets.
Rwanda
Yes, it gets worse. In Rwanda, the ruling Tutsi minority comprised 15% of the population. In 1994, the Hutu ethnic group, comprising 85% of the population, waged a horrific genocide against the Tutsi. Hutus slaughtered around 600,000 Tutsi, nearly all civilians, mostly with machetes.
Are we any different?
Comparing America to these countries might sound crazy to you. Each one already had a repressive government that denied basic rights to much of the population. That may be true, but you can’t deny the disturbing trend in the United States, where only 25% of the population considers itself Republican. And as that number shrinks and further threatens the right’s power base, they are much more likely to employ – and intensify – the scorched-earth tactics they’ve used over the last 30 years.
The problem will come to a head when the disenfranchised majority finds their power so compromised that no law-abiding approach has a prayer of success. They will think, “There are many more of us. Why are we letting this small group of people control our lives?” At that point, the majority will likely turn to other means of bringing about change – illegal or even violent means. And as unrest grows, the party in power typically resorts to increasingly harsh tactics to restore the rule of law. That in turn, only spurs further unrest, and we could easily find ourselves in the same downward spiral that we’ve seen in so many failed countries throughout the world.
An uncertain future
The real question is whether the majority can assert its authority within the confines of our current Constitutional system. If the majority succeeds, it can make legislative changes that put the system back into balance. But if the majority fails and the imbalance worsens, both sides will resort to increasingly dangerous tactics. We’ve already seen this happening with blue states setting up sanctuary cities for immigrants in clear violation of federal law. The practice of “nullification,” giving individual states the right to reject federal laws they oppose, helped launch the American Civil War, but this time around, it will be used by both red and blue states – on the issues of abortion, gun control, crime, voting rights, and climate change.
Whether or not this spiraling discord will lead to violence or a new civil war, I can’t predict. Neither can I claim to know how to fix the imbalance. But I do know the imbalance is growing every year, and we can’t blithely assume that time will smooth over the problem. Given our current dilemma, it seems clear to me that our response over the next 5 – 10 years will be among the most important in American history. Once again it will test, as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.”