(The following excerpts are from one of my essays in January 2022.)
Coming up on the anniversary of the January 6th riot, we may wish to believe that the U.S. is still the place we thought it was, and that the riot was a mere aberration. But I fear it’s time to face the fact that America has changed for the worse in fundamental ways we haven’t yet fully grasped.
Democracy is a myth, albeit one of the most useful myths humans have ever constructed, and some of us Americans embrace it wholeheartedly. Others do not and the problem is that it cannot continue to exist independently apart from our shared imaginations. Therefore, for it to work, the great majority of people who live within the myth need to keep wanting it to work.
The truth is it has been a very good myth for most of us. It is flawed, deeply flawed, but not as flawed as every other human social order — autocracy for example. But democracy won’t survive if millions of our fellow citizens don’t want it to.
Unfortunately, this week there will be some who celebrate Jan. 6, 2021 as a positive memory. Congress continues its exhaustive probe of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the evidence is horrifying but it will take a great writer to compile a report anyone will read, let alone believe.
And I’m not sure Congress contains any great writers.
***
There was a great deal more in the original essay but you get the drift and the story has taken a tragic turn now. The myth is dying before our eyes.
Prognosis; terminal.
Life expectancy: perhaps two months.
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