After the USA, What?

 

The strained and imperfect experiment in a government “of, by, and for the people” which was started in 1789 may be about to crumble, defeated by its own inner contradictions.

 

Donald Trump was only the symptom of underlying causes which go back to the founding.   The nation’s fathers (they were all wealthy white men, many of whom “owned” enslaved persons) proclaimed the ideals of the Enlightenment -- liberty, equality, and self-governance – when declaring independence from England.  But they then cynically proceeded to establish a constitutional system which subverted these ideals in order to preserve their own aristocratic privileges.

 

As has often been pointed out, the new nation did not provide for the participation in its “democracy” of women, Native Americans, enslaved African-Americans, free African-Americans, and propertyless white men.  In other words, the great preponderance of people in the new nation were given absolutely no voice in its affairs in spite of the Constitution’s opening words “We the people . . .”

 

That the nation had to endure a horrific Civil War in order to abolish so egregious an offense against decency as slavery is a testament to the founders’ cleverness in devising a constitutional system which proclaimed democracy while in reality actually subverting it.

 

It is no accident that we are saddled with two political parties which are bought and paid for by the 1%, that half the population lives insecurely in both income and health care, that we are afflicted with an economic system which pits us in a war against the planet itself, that there are ridiculous inequalities in wealth and in access to quality education, and that it is still not possible to be sure that everyone has the right to vote and that every vote will be counted fairly.  Added to all this are the nonsensical Supreme Court proclamations that corporations are persons and money is speech.

 

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade the fifty states will each have its own laws regarding abortion.  California has long established independent regulations regarding automobile emissions and other environmental matters.  Massachusetts broadened the availability of health care to its citizens long before the federal government passed the Affordable Care Act.

 

Coalitions of states could easily manage their own affairs without the present federal government, particularly if pressed by their citizenry to do so.  For example, the combination of California, Oregon and Washington State would be an entity with an area and population of the general order of magnitude of either France or Germany.  Such a coalition could well function as an independent nation if its citizens were inclined to do so.  A coalition of Massachusetts and New York would be an entity roughly the size of Norway and Sweden combined.  These would be quite viable entities for enabling the prosperity of the citizenry, entities in which, given the proper arrangements, the people could more easily hold their government accountable for legislating and administering in the interest of the common good.

 

We have been taught in grammar school that the genius of the present system is that it guards against a tyranny by the majority of the minority.  But what we have actually experienced, given the Constitutional design of the Senate, is the oppression of the majority by a minority.  Even the elimination of the non-Constitutional practice of the filibuster, while an improvement, would by no means fully correct this.  The idea that the present system of governance in the United States is the best ever invented is nonsensical.  The United States lags many other economically developed countries in the degree of well-being it provides for its citizens.  The Republican Party, with its sponsorship of myriad voter suppression laws, its opposition to a refreshed voting rights act, and its Congressional delegation’s tacit support of the insurrection of January 6, 2021, has taken the camouflage off the tyranny so many Americans have had to endure.  It is time for us to begin to lay the groundwork for a non-violent and gradualist secessionist movement.

 

Daniel A. Seeger

September 23, 2020

Revised March 26, 2021