Did The 26th Amendment Fail? Conclusion

 

For the better part of two centuries the left of America have believed in some version of the same theory. It is held deep among fringe elements of many of its groups – African-Americans, women, in recent years the LGBTQ+ community, the LatinX and the youngest members of all these groups.

It breaks into two disparate elements that, for all their academic writing, historical facts and complicated vocabulary, are at their core as utterly lacking in reality as those that one can find on Info Wars and Newsmax. Because of that, it has historically gained less traction in society at large than the right wing’s because theirs is horribly simple as to the cause and has an easy remedy. For that reason it would easily be dismissed. However given the presence of social media in society as well as the utter devotion it has in certain elite circles – particularly academia and Hollywood – it is very likely going to gain a permanent toehold in our society that with each generation will be more likely to have those who believe and if they continue to follow that logic will inevitably make things incrementally worse in the years to follow. It is therefore important to understand both what this generation believes and how they think it can be fixed, so one can realize how flawed they are going forward.

The basic part of the theory has not changed much since the days of William Lloyd Garrison. It has progressed from the days of the antebellum south but by and large it is unchanged. It argues that all of the freedoms that we as Americans are granted by the Constitution are somehow tainted irrevocably because of the undeniable fact they were borne out of the conditions of the necessity of the founders to acknowledge slavery’s existence in order to form the United States. This has been added to by each successive minority group who has argued because the founders were all white men, every single right is tainted by white supremacy and misogyny and it not merely irrevocable but in the beliefs f many young people, are non-existent. The everyday freedoms that we take for granted in our society are not actual freedoms by their definition.

Because of the cudgel of racism and the often sordid realities of our history, none of the coalitions ever ask to next obvious question: what would their definition of freedom be? The most equality any democracy – any society  - can grant its citizens is equality under the law. In that sense while America is hardly the shining city on a hill the conservatives claim it to be, it is hardly the oppressive dictatorship the left claims it is. They demonstrate it even as they say hateful things about their own government, see the criticism published on line and related on TV, have the ability to peacefully assemble within reason and express the claims of our society’s oppression on the internet with no real repercussions. Yet that never seems to be mentioned among the publications or journals online.

The problems that so many minorities have are based in different kind of problem; one that has no real remedy. How do we protect our society from people’s racist behavior towards them and the frequently violent outbursts that come from them? The answer is simple: no society can. When a society attempts to regulate any of its citizens way of thinking, when it clamps down on dissent and argues that those who think differently from you are less than human, when it decides to define what one groups thinks as immoral or hateful based on another group’s vision of it, then it is not a democracy but rather a dictatorship. The left deserves credit for pointing out the right ‘s effort to bring this about in America. They neglect to mention that the ideal society they seem to be hinting at is little more than a mirror image of that.

In the argument of the left which the young are increasingly adopting, the institutions that we as Americans have spent decades involved in, from our schools to our law enforcement to all three branches of government, are built in propagate the Big Lie: that America is a free society. They do so by argue that all of the imperfections in our government, by virtue of being designed hundreds of years ago, are ill-suited to today’s society largely because the founders were not clairvoyant. Essentially they have collectively found the past guilty of the irrevocable crime of being the past. That the Founders had no way of foreseeing a world with steam powered engines or automobiles, much less the Internet, never enters that way of thinking either. The left has always known these things; therefore everyone else does, therefore everyone else did. That everything they have learned comes on the shoulders of each successive generation is something they will either not accept or say because of the circumstances of the founding, should be ignored outright.

By and large a fair amount of the left’s thinking is designed around deconstruction and despair. This is in large part because for all of the left’s moaning about the inequities of society, they have nothing better to replace it with. And this leads to the contradiction. Much of their thinking and marching is about the evils of capitalism. There is much to be said about its inequities and its flaws and how much of its is broken. The problem is society is fine with it. No one – not even the harsher detractors of it – wants to go back to an era you had to grow your own foods, build your own goods, provide your own transportation and everything else associated with it. Even its fiercest detractors never deny that they benefit from its advantages. That they spent so much time ranting about the evils of Silicon Valley while using the devices and forums those same Silicon Valley designed would seem the biggest contradiction in their own eyes. That there is a cottage industry built on the derogatory nature of capitalism is another contradiction no one acknowledges.

And the fact that even before the rise of Donald Trump many influential people denounced the presidential primary – designed in large part to bring more democracy to the people  - and seem more inclined to embrace the power broker system that previous generations denounced as oppressive  - makes it very clear of their own frequently elitist belief. To paraphrase Clemenceau, to many democracy is too important to be left in the hands of the voters. That this a step backwards for democracy, not forward, is something that none of them are willing to acknowledge.

This is fundamentally clear in the behavior of those enfranchised by the 26^th Amendment: they are less inclined to be politically active than they were before they were enfranchised even though they actually have the only power that allows them to advocate for the issues they care about. And having had a half century to think about it, they still have nothing better to replace democracy or capitalism with. So a great deal of their arguments – among themselves – is to regurgitate the leftist talking points and keep saying the same thing a hundred different ways. It is regurgitated in liberal magazines, academic journals, certain cable news networks, even some late night comedy shows and endlessly on social media. Basically it is countless intelligent people telling you how screwed society is and that there’s nothing we can do – so keep reading, buying, watching or liking my next piece of work that will tell some variation on this. It’s not exactly a call to the barricades.

The other part of this argument – the one that is seemingly constructive – takes a different perspective, albeit one just as historically skewed and in fact even more convoluted. In this narrative the programs of the Great Society and all of the social constructs argued by for the left were working perfectly fine with no flaws. The corporate interests saw this and they advocated the Republican Party to act in those interest. They have spent the last half century using their ill-gotten gains – built on the backs of all hard working Americans – to divide America by white against black. They also rigged the judiciary, created think tanks, and used the electoral system to subvert the will of the people, especially the ones who voted Republican. These hard workers would know this truth like those of us in the left were it not for the manipulations of the right – and it is implied, the fact that they lack the means to get the kind of education to know everything the left does now.

Now they are victims of this as much as anybody else but because of the fact they have lived under Republican rule for decades they don’t deserve to be uplifted the way the rest of America – by which they mean the city dwellers, the educated, the African-American, the LatinX, the women voter, the LGBTQ+ community – do. In this part of the narrative they have been indoctrinated so much by the far-right that they are beyond redemption. By and large they also live in the South, which in this narrative is no different since the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, and therefore ae the most backwards of them all. (Just the people in rural sections; those who live in cities are fine.) They don’t recognize America anymore but since their version of America was bigoted and a lie propagated by the right wing, they are best left behind. Besides they are getting older  and will eventually go extinct. It is up to us, the enlightened ones, to enact a series of progressive policies that will save us and in the long run, eventually trickle down and save future generations of these hayseeds from themselves. This will be in part because they will become more educated, more enlightened, more progressive. And eventually they will vote Democratic, driving the Republican party out of existence, finally creating an effective democracy.

Even the most charitable reader of this theory – which is implied, if not stated directly on progressive blogs like Daily Kos – can see the bigoted and often dictatorial thinking of this writing. This is hardly a coincidence. Just as if one goes far enough to the right one gets a fascist dictatorship if one goes far enough to the right one gets a Marxist dictatorship, something that AOC and the Squad all but acknowledge when the call themselves ‘democratic socialists’. Because of the obvious connotations with both of these terms the progressive tries everything in its power to avoid them – though the fact that there are publications devoted to Marxists and socialists indicates they do still have a following.

Instead they try to argue a more benevolent kind of democracy, one that has to do with the worst elements of American history and the very real ways the GOP has spent much of the last half century rigging the system to favor them in every branch of the government, from redistricting to winning two Presidential elections despite losing the popular vote to the way the Senate has rigged the judiciary in the past twenty years. And when one combines the myriad other ways the right has corrupted so many aspects of our everyday life to taking on increasingly dictatorial overtones, the appeal of the progressive vision certainly sounds like a better one to many. But at its core its just a different kind of dictatorship, one where the minority has no real rights in it except to voice its opposition and then being ignored. (And considering how the left has recently taken the attitude that one should never push back against them, there’s clear an authoritarian note to that as well.)

Much of this argument goes to the left’s strengths which have always been more towards the urban and educated than the rural. And in doing so they engaged in the kind of cherry-picking that they have become masterful at. Paramount among it is how the small, rural states have a ‘disproportionate amount of power’. This is essentially a euphemism for “the ignorant people who live in states we would not be caught dead in are all in the same place.” (For those of you who think this is too harsh, far stronger and more profane language is often found in progressive journals and is all but gospel among late night comics such as Bill Maher and John Oliver.)

Frequently they talk about the states such as Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and the Dakotas combined have a smaller and far less diverse population than California and yet all of those get the same number of Senators. That’s true of course. It’s also true that Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont combined have a smaller and less diverse population then Texas – or for that matter, Florida or Ohio. Yet one will rarely hear arguments on the left arguing that the five states I mentioned in the previous section have too much representation in the Senate and that Texas and Florida too little. The logic is obvious, of course – those five states are among the most Democratic in the country when it comes to representation in the Senate. Yet no one ever argues ‘nobody’ lives in Vermont and ‘everybody’ lives in Texas the same way they say that ‘nobody lives in Wyoming and everyone lives in New York.”

And it’s not like every single ruby red state is entirely made up of Republicans – it’s not as though Trump won every single vote in Utah anymore than Biden won every single vote in Minnesota. For all the argument about red states and blue states, democracy is purple. The left’s version of how many Americans are on the wrong side of history has in this century alone including at least 45 to 48 percent of the electorate. That’s a very large part of the population to ignore the will of – and yet that seems to be the ‘left’s strategy for victory’.

I use quotations because the strategy falls apart the moment you look at it. For the executive branch, they want to have elections determined by national popular vote. To break the filibuster in the Senate, they want statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. For the conservative supermajority on the supreme court, they spent all of Biden’s term demanding passage of a Judiciary Act that would enable him to put four new liberal justices on the Court.

But according to their own arguments the Republicans have gerrymandered the Senate so that none of this legislation could pass without convincing Republicans to vote for it – which based on their own arguments they will never do. The only way to get Congress to agree to any of this would be to try and win Democratic seats in the very Republican states that they say are unwinnable – and which they are arguing for the passage of these same bills in order to countermand them.

And even one were to engage in the kind of magical thinking where somehow Congress or a Democratic President got all these bills passed, none of this considers what happens after that. The most generous interpretation is that the Democrats than pass all of this sweeping leftist legislations that helps the masses. Then the argument is that somehow all of the bits of Justice Democrats platform will be enacted without a word of dissent or opposition from so many of the Republican governed states that have spent the last twenty years opposed every bit of that same legislation. We’ve already seen how that played out with so many Republican states refusing to use Obamacare and so many of the programs of the Great Society and beyond have been badly handled in states, red and blue. Just the idea of universal health care led to the creation of the Tea Party and eventually the rise of Donald Trump. Does anyone really think that all of those legislators in states the progressives love to mock in their fundraiser will just enact them without a word of disagreement?

Even the idea of the sweeping reforms discussed by the left are based on the idea that after that the Republicans will never win back Congress or the White House. Say Biden had passed the Judicial Reform Act and appointed four new liberal justices to give a 7-6 majority? What would have stopped the next Republican congress to pass another reform act enabling them to put two new conservative justices on the Supreme Court to give them the majority back? How long would it be before Puerto Rico and DC elected Republican Senators or Congressmen to the states? The leftist version of America is basically being able to have more voices to outshout the opposition and therefore claiming you can’t hear them. It is no more healthy for a society then the minority rule the right has been arranging for years.

The danger I feel is coming with the current generation, raised entirely on its cellphones and never knowing a Republican who isn’t named Donald Trump. Just as social media has been the best thing to happen to the GOP and the worst thing for America, it has been a different version of it for the left-wing.

The internet has raised an entire generation of people who think that everything that they rely on can be provided for them with a push of  a button on their phone, have no understanding of how America works beyond what they see on the internet and genuinely can’t understand why you can’t pass a bill as quickly as you can download the newest version of an app. They are also in bubbles that isolate them from dissenting thought beyond the wildest dreams of academia. And they will be more open to the appeal of the left’s narrative than ever.

A citizen’s relationship to America should be symbiotic. The country gives many things to its populace – far more than one gets in a dictatorship – and asks for very little in return. The left’s relationship to society has always been closer to that of a parasite to a host. They believe they should be able to suck it dry of everything it can possibly offer and give nothing back in return. This is why it fundamentally has had a greater appeal to certain parts of society –  particularly the young who with each generation have wanted for less and less and have parents who don’t demand that much of them. Now in addition to that an entire generation will have been raised to think that everything in the world can be provided on your phone and can pick and choose what they want to find out about the world online without even having to read the books about it.

There has been a part of me, particularly in the age of Trump, who wonders whether the left’s outrage in him is based in a combination of envy and the vague thought that he has stolen their talking points. It’s not that he has a hold on the Republican party and the electorate that none of them are capable of; it’s that so much of the things that he says and thinks that shock so many people are things that they themselves believe in. For all the derogatory remarks Trump has made about the military and veterans over the last decade, one can’t forget that this has been very close to the attitude of the anti-war marchers in Vietnam who spit on soldiers and forced the sitting President out of office. Whatever loyalty the left has, it is towards causes far less than institutions which it considers by and large corrupt and racist. Ideas of loyalty to anything – certainly a political party – is something they’ve never understood and there has been a large part who have never had any respect for serving the country in any form. “What’s in it for them?” some of them outright say to those who serve public office or the military. “They’re suckers.’

The only solutions I can suggest – at least for future generations – is to limit as much contact as possible with the internet with whatever children are born in the years to come. This will no doubt lead to huge resistance among the children themselves and I can’t pretend it’s a perfect solution. But the fact remains that internet and social media need some kind of intense regulation. And since neither the government nor the industry has intention of doing it or the means to do so,  it must fall upon us the citizens.

Considering how easily it has come to be manipulated and how untrustworthy it has proven to be, future generations will have to be kept their access to it for as long as possible and to an absolute minimum. As they grow older they should be allowed to have incrementally more of it and even then, it should be monitored as much as possible.

The harder part will be given children a different kind of freedom: less structure in their lives, more ability to fail on their own. One can’t pretend it isn’t a frightening world out there and no one’s going to say it will get less so in the years to come. But the fact remains that parents have to accept that there is only so much that they can do to protect their children against the outside world. I’m not a parent so I can’t pretend to know what that’s like. But I have been a child and I know that no matter what kind of parenting you do at some point your child is going to rebel against it, get angry with you and have fights with you. It happens with free-range parenting and helicopter parenting alike.

We will also have to have children do more work for themselves and that will be going to places they can find information rather than looking on the Internet. While I am opposed to keeping your children off social media as long as possible, I believe the opposite is true for giving them a public library card. I also think going forward letting children fail has to be allowed when it comes to their grades. Sad as it is for parents to accept, not every child in the world can be an A student. The majority of us are B and C students. This will be a hard fact of life for both parents and children to accept but considering that previous generations are increasingly getting higher grades with no ability to understand what they learned; it has to be accepted.

And the hardest part is going to be to teach your children that technological savvy and intelligence will not now nor ever equal common sense. This may be the most difficult lesson for any person to learn. And the easiest way to learn it means accepted what can be done to fix it. And that means being more active in the world by living in it.

It means learning that the history of our nation has not been written yet because we have no idea how it will end. It means being able to read and process multiple sources and never taking one single view of the world as ‘real’ just because it fits your experience. It means accepting the often bitter truth that democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others.

And it means realizing that the sticker you get for having voted is the only participation trophy that really matters.