Election Day Short Takes

To borrow a quote from the late great Gore Vidal:

From studying the polls, I would guess that about a third of the American people at any given moment would welcome a fascist state. This is because we have never been able to to get across in our schools what the country was all about. I suspect that the reason for this failure is the discrepancy between what we were meant to be — a republic — and what we are — a predatory empire — is so plain to children that they regard a study of our Constitution as just another form of television commercial and just as phony.

If you want to know why the American population is so uninterested at protecting democracy, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the very concept has been so perverted for the cast multiple decades. In the Reagan era, democracy was an excuse to cut takes for the rich and remove the social safety net from the poor. In the Bush era, democracy was the excuse for mindlessly following dear leader while not questioning his two invasions nor his desire to remove any privacy from your life.

One of the things I do love about Joe Biden is how he’s been framing the issue of democracy as a way of life, one that Republicans have constantly failed at. Biden has also called out this “end of history” idea that democracy is the inevitable conclusion of politics. The fact he not only takes…