Of the People

"Who knows what Lincoln (and others) meant (and mean) by the phrase "of the people"? Is it possessive as in "management of the estate" or "owner of the house"? Or is is causal, like "died of a broken heart"? Or is it partitive, as in the "hem of her skirt" or "hair of the dog"? Or is it all of these?

When I wrote By the People, I thought I would soon follow with Of the People and For the People. But I got stuck on Of.

I suppose government "of the people" might simply refer to administration primarily of people rather than of property or of the economy or of a highway or tax system. Those other things become responsibilities of government only in as much as they affect "the people." But that's getting into the realm of "for the people."

Maybe it's even simpler: Lincoln wanted to emphasize the importance of the people three ways for oratorical effect, even though "by" and "for" might have covered his intent.

I suspect there's more to it. I won't presume that Lincoln had this in mind, but it's worth consideration. Maybe government of the people means that government follows the people rather than requiring the people to follow those in charge. Daniel Webster said earlier that it is "the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people."

Every government is "answerable to the people." The people have the ultimate power. What our founders established was an acknowledgement of something that was always true. Our "fathers brought forth a new nation" as an honest attempt to institutionalize this natural rule of the people through a system of representatives elected by the people.

Citizens hold authority, whether or not they wield it. This is why governments and companies spend so much effort trying to influence people. Those at the top use their position to try to influence the electorate instead of dictating how things will be. We rejected the way of the kings of Europe, who thought they could dictate to the people. Some in business still dictate. Maybe that's OK, because workers can usually quit and work for someone else.

I'm reminded of something John Oliver said of Elon Musk: "He wants to save the world. But only if he can be the one to save it." 

That is not of the people. It's hubris.

Howard Schultz, founder and former CEO of Starbucks, was impressive in his insistence on taking care of his employees. But when they said they wanted more of a say, through a union, he fought them. Only I can fix it, he thought. They cannot fix things for themselves.

That is not of the people. It's patriarchy.

We also see desperate, yet often successful, propaganda from regimes that build systems to exploit the people to benefit a few oligarchs. They cannot simply say, "Because I said so!" They have to get a significant proportion of the people to believe in whatever they are peddling. They flood the world with lies, if that's what it takes.

This is not of the people. It's domination.

There was a time when most people accepted the notion that some were born to rule and others to be ruled. This acceptance was part of what allowed authoritarians to tell people what to do. But that notion faded in recent centuries with the rise of democracy. Now tactics have changed. There are still governments that rule with an iron fist, and some of them still have a populace that believes the ones in charge are ordained. But more often a move toward more extreme oppression is an effort to quell the people's dissatisfaction and resulting restlessness.

Authoritarians, many who gained a foothold by appealing to the citizens, have a lot of sway. Especially when they ally themselves with titans of industry. Now they have the money they need, and the wealthy bosses have government policies that ensure they get a lion's share of the markets. If the media can be pressured toward propaganda and the courts can be influenced to judge in favor of the already privileged, then the common people are at a serious disadvantage.

We citizens are not of one mind. We don't see eye to eye in the best of times and, when the bullhorns of propaganda blare in support of an authoritarian and his sponsors, it is difficult to cut through the confusion.

But it is still up to us. We gradually learn what is going on and, if we can no longer vote because we voted in an authoritarian, we can still protest. The dictator, never fully in charge, raises the volume on his lies. He threatens (or worse) those who disagree. He shifts blame for our discontent to scapegoats. But he responds to the people. He might even make policy adjustments in our favor. If we persist, he will fall.

I suppose we will always reserve some respect for those who thrash their way to the top. But this should never blind us to their wiles, their selfishness, their will to dominate. We will always tolerate some of this nonsense and go about our business, but we must not be deaf and silent.

For now, we can let our collective voice be heard through the ballot box. But, no matter what happens, if we decide not to put up with authoritarianism, we can stop it. The governing of us is up to us. It is always ultimately a government of the people. Any one, any party, any clan or cult that suppresses our voice or claims the right to decide for the rest is wrong. They are not of the people.

Be it Resolved

Earlier this year, the House of Representative resolved to denounce socialism, in all its forms. The resolution lists a number of regimes and concludes that all socialism is horrid.

I suspect the framers of this resolution hope to cast aspersions on socialized medicine and Social Security, among other "horrors of socialism." Does the House condemn our strongest allies, Western European nations with national health care and strong safety nets for their citizens? Israel and Hungary have excellent national health plans, so must they too must be struck from the list of "good guys"?

A lot of Democrats along with all but three Republican members of congress (who apparently were out of town) voted for this resolution. I suppose they didn't want to face voters who might ask, "How could you refuse to denounce Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and Kim Jong Un?!"

The resolution lists these and other brutal dictators. It fails to mention that each of these dictators was an authoritarian. And, because they denounced only the socialists instead of all authoritarians, they missed some biggies, such as Hitler and Mussolini.

So I drafted a similar resolution, which covers all the bases of H. Con. Res. 9 and then some. It also puts the ideological blame where it is due. If we can find a sponsor, maybe voters will get the chance to confront their Representatives: "How could you refuse to denounce Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini?!"

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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Denouncing the horrors of authoritarianism.

Whereas authoritarian ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into Communist and fascist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships;

Whereas authoritarianism has repeatedly led to famine and mass murders, and the killing of over 150,000,000 people worldwide;

Whereas many of the greatest crimes in history were committed by authoritarian ideologues, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Jorge Videla, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, and Nicolas Maduro;

Whereas tens of millions died in the Bolshevik Revolution, at least 10,000,000 people were sent to the gulags in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and millions more starved in the Terror-Famine (Holodomor) in Ukraine;

Whereas 6,000,000 million Jews from across Europe were deemed “vermin” and slaughtered;

Whereas another 6,000,000 non-Jewish people from Germany, Poland, Russia, were murdered by the Nazi regime and its allies;

Whereas authoritarian regimes initiated and perpetrated World War II, which led directly to the deaths of 50,000,000 to 60,000,000 people and the death of another 20,000,000 due to war-related disease and famine;

Whereas between 15,000,000 and 55,000,000 people starved to death in the wake of famine and devastation caused by the Great Leap Forward in China;

Whereas the authoritarian regime in Cambodia led to the killing fields in which over a million people were gruesomely murdered;

Whereas up to 3,500,000 people have starved in North Korea, dividing a land of freedom from a land of destitution;

Whereas authoritarian dictators in Africa and South America, such as Idi Amin and Augusto Pinochet, brought oppression and death to millions of innocent citizens;

Whereas the authoritarian Castro regime in Cuba expropriated the land of Cuban farmers and the businesses of Cuban entrepreneurs, stealing their possessions and their livelihoods, and exiling millions with nothing but the clothes on their backs;

Whereas authoritarianism in Venezuela turned a once-prosperous nation into a failed State with the world’s highest rate of inflation;

Whereas the author of the Declaration of Independence, President Thomas Jefferson, wrote, ‘‘A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people’’;

Whereas the ‘‘Father of the Constitution’’, President James Madison, wrote that ‘‘The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands whether of one, a few or many...may be justly pronounced the very definition of tyranny’’;

and Whereas the United States of America was founded on the belief in the rights of all individuals equally to have a say in who represents them, to which rights authoritarian systems in all forms are fundamentally and necessarily opposed:

Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress denounces authoritarianism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of authoritarian policies in the United States of America. 

Future of Democracy

There have been times and places when the will of the people has been crushed. Fascism on the right and communism on the left have managed to establish totalitarian states, where people's voices were controlled with an iron fist. But more recent forms of authoritarianism put a padded glove on the fist.

I vaguely recall a quote that I associate with a college literature course on the books of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who survived one of these states. It went something like this: "You can cover the world in concrete, but somewhere there is a seam, and a flower will grow up through the crack." Even the most extreme totalitarianism is less than total. (This could change, some think, with the advent of AI.)

The internet and social media have exploited and widened the cracks. It is now nearly impossible to stop some truth from seeping in. And truth has a corroding effect on the reinforcement grid of totalitarian regimes. So while the desire to control is as strong as ever, the means to achieve control has changed. Instead of covering the world in concrete, the new method is to cover it with a liquid toxic waste of disinformation.

Lying is not new. Authoritarians have always promoted lies and repeated them over and over. Along with the lies, authoritarians require a grievance. If we believe a system is rigged against us, we are inclined to believe all sorts of evils and identify with whoever promotes the conspiracy. Every grievance requires a bogeyman. Someone else is responsible for my fear.

And then you accuse the bogeyman of your own crime. This is what Hitler does in Mein Kampf, when he says Jews have an “unqualified capacity for falsehood.” It's what Goebbels does when he says of his enemy: 

The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

So, while disinformation is an old tactic, how it is disseminated is changing. Since you can no longer close an iron curtain to shut out the truth, you need to dilute truth to the point where it loses its effect.

A profusion of lies allows authoritarians to use free speech to confuse and sway people who might otherwise have demonstrated good judgment. This is the firehose strategy: a flood of lying mixed with unsubstantiated claims. The need to squelch the truth is compensated for by simply flooding accurate news streams with garbage and poison. And if a few made-up news items turn out to be true, all the better; it counteracts accusations of malevolent disinformation. It matters less what you lie about than that you lie constantly and prolifically. Typically there is a central lie that rises above all the others, but the firehose ensures that there is enough confusion to keep everyone guessing. 

Some focused squeezing of the more influential sources of truth can help switch the narrative. As confusion and frustration rise, people look for scapegoats, and the grievance narrative gains traction. Are you frustrated? Blame "them." More extreme measures include murdering those who investigate and then publicly denying responsibility (while sometimes using methods that make certain the victim's colleagues know who can come for them).

If enough people embrace an imagined superiority of certainty and the new freedom of blaming others, then the will of honest people who accept the reality of nuance is overcome. They simply cannot keep up with the torrents of disinformation and the fervor of those who accept the key lies. They give up.

It's a softer authoritarianism than was employed in the past, but it works in today's world. And it works where some thought it wouldn't. We thought Poland and Hungary, freed from the grasp of their giant neighbor, had embraced representative democracy. Only briefly. We thought Russia threw off a totalitarian state in favor of freedom. But the freedom was mostly given to the oligarchs, and the country's leader pines for the totalitarian past.

Surely, we have said, it won't happen here in the the US. We have traditions and laws that make it difficult for the would-be authoritarian. But the sanctity of democracy is being challenged. On January 6 an insurrection shocked us. Ah, I thought as I listened to sycophants suddenly express horror, this is the turning point. But within a few short days and weeks, virtually an entire party had decided it was no big deal, not worth investigating, while a majority of that party's elected representatives voted to not certify our votes.

Even good guys, such as Brad Raffensperger and Ed McBroom, who valiantly defended our election integrity, decided to advance the narrative that our elections need fixing, that targeted suppression (often mixed with more banal election changes) is in order, and that they could vote for the man who is still trying to reverse the election they protected. My congressional representative initially bucked his party's trend, but now pretends nothing serious happened and even said he too could support the man who won't stop lying about his election loss. Support for democracy has taken a second seat to extremism and party pragmatism.

An article in USA Today from shortly before the election, while noting Trump's dictatorial tendencies, took an optimistic outlook. Its conclusion: "What matters is that the 2020 results are respected." That optimism was misplaced: the results have not been respected, and vast numbers of Americans remain willing to vote for the ring-leader lying about those results.

Authoritarianism is coming. Likely it will come from the right, but perhaps it will be a reaction from the left. Some will protest loudly and pay a grim price. Some will wring their hands and wonder where we went wrong. Media that haven't chosen outright propaganda will push the envelope on what they can get away with, but will mostly back off when pressured lest they lose what voice they still have. Most of us will adjust and we'll ignore what's happening in exchange for protection against retaliation and the right to live our lives almost normally.

Some Americans will look at those of us who talk quietly and wistfully of our more democratic past and ask, Do you think this is new? Didn't you notice when the discrimination was focused on us? Or us? Or us? Or us?

And maybe we, who didn't, but now do share a loss of freedom, will begin to understand. And maybe then, together, we can try again to make it right. And maybe, sometime in the future, democracy's future will be better for it.

Maybe.