Waking Up, Pt. 2 - Never Did? Never Would?

It is the 4th of July, and so even more than Brexit and our "silly season" of politics, to quote Pres. Obama, this day offers annually an opportunity to consider what our country has stood for and where we stand now.  Frederick Douglas' "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" is still the gold standard for a critique of the national myth.    You can read it here.   

So I'll pick up here where I left off, which is to think on what might be called our current political "self-concept".  The first thing that occurs to me is that we in America operate with a certain existential security, perhaps even arrogance, about the stability of our political order, and assumptions about its essential legitimacy.  It partly  explains mainstream media and pundit class getting the Trump candidacy sooo wrong.  They were - we were -- unblinkinly dismissive.  
     Surely the bombastic Donald Trump could never win the GOP nom, it was said last Spring.  
     He’ll flame out by close of summer.   
     By October.   
     After Ben Carson has his day.   
     By the debates.    
     By Iowa.   
     Once the field really consolidates.   
Really smart people, like Nate Silver smart, crunched the numbers and came to the same conclusion.
     
Nope.  This undeniably racist dog whistler secured the nomination and has formidable popular support.   And still, after all that, many think, America could never…  Why is that?
      
Besides the many checks and balances embedded into the very structure of our government, the party system itself has long been another significant firewall against, to take the most non-normative word I can think of, the fringe.   So, not only could some crazy like say, Hitler, never hold office, but the likelihood that such a person would even make it past the semifinals, the primaries, has been viewed by most as nil.* 

       

Another key assumption underlying all the incredulity, all the we would nevers is a belief that, well, America never did.  That is, our democratic order is stable and has been, though imperfect, nonetheless legitimate.  Essentially, a reflection of our popular consent.    In the ancient civilizations class I teach to 6^th graders, kids precociously scoff at the claim of Greek democracy when merely 1 of 7 people could actually participate.   Establishment historians apply a standard that I would call, “quantum of consent,” and so though the bar may have been raised, steadily over the centuries,  both the Athenians at 1 of 7 during the Classical Age, and America, say at 1 in 4 circa our founding, qualified as democracies because a requisite “quantum of consent” prevailed. 

“Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone.” 

Black people, of course, might beg to differ.  Fred. Doug. certainly did.  For most of American history government as a reflection of popular will was painfully inapplicable to black people and most other racial minorities.  But what did black people do?  Well, we endured, struggled to survive, to maintain our dignity, and maybe for the most hardy, faithful and/or lucky, managed to craft a marginally better life for children.  This is what we could live for and live we did, nonviolently and with great expectation.  But for years the majority of America, which was or became white, deemed this arrangement, still without the consent of a large minority of the governed, democratic enough. 

So, as Van Jones and others rail (pun intended) that our train could jump its track, I am reminded of that knowing inquiry, also the title of James Baldwin’s penultimate half-decent novel, “Tell me how long the train’s been gone.”  (I know, mixing metaphors I am).    In reality the train may have long since left the station, always with vast number of seats unoccupied.  

Of course, in all manner of ways, black Americans and other people of color have found seats on the train.  The poignancy of the Black Lives Matter Movement is, partly, that blackness prevents certainty of a safe passage; a certain threat prevails that, without due process, procedural or substantive, we could be summarily thrown from train.  And sometimes, that threat is fulfilled.  So, an insecure belonging, you might say.  

But now there has arisen an argument that corporate capture of the electoral process has eroded the “quantum of consent” necessary, in our times, to call our democracy legitimate.  Enter Sanders.  Or, that along with that, erstwhile racial minorities themselves have also “captured” (somehow, from marginal stations) politics and government.  Enter Trump.    

So, will the train run the tracks?  And, for that matter on this 4th of July we might ask, who the hell is on the train, anyways?

_______

* A year ago, amidst the din of naysayers, Van Jones was prescient than most but even he only went as far as the plausibility of Trump running as an independent.