Returning to Democracy

Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again. It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: “Kings. What a good idea.” Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees. – Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

Three years ago, I wrote a piece about aristocracy in the United States. It laid out US history as a story of swings between aristocratic and democratic rule in the USA. I ended the piece with “And here my path fades out into the trackless wilderness.” So, it seems did our government, which is now in the full flowering of an aristocratic backlash, with multiple factions fighting to become the new aristocracy. A new technique of aristocratic rule has also emerged: hijacking the administrative state; this couldn’t be done in the past because the modern administrative state did not exist during past periods of aristocratic ascendance.

The tendency to aristocracy has a long history in the USA, but so does the desire for freedom and democracy. From (First?) Civil War history, quoted by Jamelle Bouie:

When an Iowan encountered a young child about to be sold by her own father, who was also her master, he vowed, “By G-d I’ll fight till hell freezes over and then I’ll cut the ice and fight on.” – quoted by Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over

In many countries, when there is a bad king, what the country hopes for is a good king. In the United States, instead, the response is We have No Kings! In the United States, there is a constant returning to democracy, despite aristocratic tendencies. And so I have hope.

Travel … arrival … / Years … of an inch and a step toward a source / I’m coming to you / I’ll be there in time – Suzanne Vega, Pilgrimage.