Franklin's "A republic, if you can keep it," burns in the minds of many pundits, historians, and academics ever since the attempted ― albeit sloppily ― coup of Jan. 6, 2021. I marinated on this during the early days of this cold, new year of 2022.
America touts itself as the oldest democracy in world history. This is technically true, but with huge caveats. Really, only wealthy, white men could vote until, briefly, the American Reconstruction, and then much later, women's suffrage, and finally, people of color after 1965 and the Voting Rights Act.
A multiracial, multicultural, areligious democracy is not an easy feat to pull off. We must be honest about a thing. Democracy is an aberration. For the vast scope of human history, monarchies (autocracies by any other name) have been the way in which humanity has been governed.
The Jan. 6 anniversary exposes American flaws in ways no other cataclysm could. White supremacy, if reduced to its bones, says anything not European is foul and unworthy and un-American. Thus, black and brown and Asian people's votes are inherently illegitimate. The election of President Biden is therefore unfair.
But using political violence against "the other" is not new to American history. The genocidal land theft of the Indigenous, slavery, Jim Crow, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, homophobia, Islamophobia and on and on are all the forms of political violence.
In acts of financial envy, American, wealthy black towns in the early 1900s were burned by poor white folks, and its citizens were massacred with the imprimatur of the state, if not its direct involvement therein.
I'm not one to fetishize ex-President Trump as the second coming of evil, covering the world in a "second darkness." White nationalists, ethnostate-fascists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis have had a bit of a Mariah Carey comeback since President George H.W. Bush, and not just in America, but across swaths of Europe and even in liberal bastions like New Zealand, of all places (where, in Christchurch, in the spring of 2019, a young, white man (invariably) killed 51 Muslims in their mosques, while wounding 40, with the monstrous audacity of doing so while filming it on Facebook Live).
White supremacy is surely a pillar of a rise in far-right politics throughout Europe and elsewhere (Brazil, for example), but perhaps it's something more than that. I go back to Sylvia Plath: "Every woman adores a fascist." If I could rephrase: "Everyone adores a fascist." It may be that just as humanity is pre-programmed to believe in omnipotent, supernatural gods, it may be that humanity is hardwired to enjoy the boot in the face; the chain; the almighty Leader.
China is a cautionary tale in this regard. In China's modern era, the Chinese Communist Party ruled as a democracy of the few. Councils debated policies and voted on them. The presidents, after Mao Zedong, were technocrats, and did not attempt to control the granular behavior of Chinese citizens, like showing conspicuous consumption via the wealthy, or androgynous Chinese pop stars or writing freely on social media. In fact, China's governing elite considered liberalizing society.
Then came President Xi Jinping, who consolidated power masterfully in a matter of years, crushed all opposition and has forced behavior he deems inappropriate to be repressed. How, and why, did the governing elite allow Xi to become an emperor with no resistance, and moreover, changed the very constitution to be president for life?
How did Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan do about the same thing as Xi? In Russia, President Putin's power grab is more understandable, but no less startling in the speed and bloody accuracy in which he has maintained his power.
The shame of Jan. 6 is how pathetic American governmental institutions are at the highest levels. Ex-President Park Geun-hye was easily impeached and jailed for her crimes ― this, when Korea has been a true democracy for less than 40 years. How has Korea been able to depose despotic presidents through democratic processes, while Trump, corrupt in so many ways I can't enumerate here, is not only free, but may run again for president in 2024?
President Biden, in his brilliant and fiery freedom speech, promises to fight for democracy. That's a tall order. Nice work, if you can get it.
Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside of Seoul.