The Russian-American philosopher and writer Ariel Durant said, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” After this week’s election, we now know if the USA has embarked on destroying itself from within or whether our democracy, a quasi-democracy at that (but this is another story), might limp along for a few more years.
The aim of the Republican Party as it is now is to destroy this democracy in favor of unrestrained capitalism. As the writer Elizabeth MacLean, who wrote a book about the far-right takeover of our democracy called “Democracy in Chains,” said, their goal “is to protect capitalism from democracy.”
This process of chaining democracy began with Ronald Reagan. By now it is just about complete. Will we remain a democracy after this election? Do we care more about democracy or the price of gas?
Or will we finally end it to become just another harsh authoritarian and apartheid state, based on religion, something that the Iranian ayatollahs, Putin, or the Saudi Arabians would be intimately familiar with?
So we hang on the edge. It almost feels like that void between the fall of the democratic Weimar Republic and when the Nazis under Hitler came to power. We are going on as before, but something sinister is on the horizon. Which way?
Either way, America as we know it has been destroyed from within for good.
Walter Carpenter
Montpelier
