To be a citizen of a republic really is a hassle. Seriously, I’m not joking. So much is expected of you. I mean, think of it. First, you are expected to stay informed about various issues that affect you, your fellow citizens, and your country as a whole. Not only are you expected to do this, but you are expected to make time for it on your own, and unless you’re one of those people who ‘works well without direct supervision,’ then it’s not going to happen.
Most people would not only have to be led to the water of staying informed, but they’s also have to be made to drink it, and republics that function on a set of democratic processes aren’t really set up to force people drink information. Republics of this nature are set up to make the water available for people to drink, but the decision to either drink the water of information and knowledge, or to sit, thirsty, in the parched dryness of ignorance is theirs to make.
Second, not only are you expected to stay informed, but you’re also expected to stay informed with the truth. That means that you’re expected to pull your face out of your algorithm directed social media apps for a few seconds (yeah, good luck), and look something up. Never mind that the pervasive internet and the evolving G networks everywhere make that the easiest task, ever. Forget it. People don’t care about the truth, because the truth sucks. The truth means they have to be truly awake in some manner, other than just walking through life with a fake smile on their faces, and see the world as it really is. If people do that, then, well, there go all of the smiles, fake or not.
Third, and this is the worst part, ever. Not only are citizens of a republic expected to stay informed with the truth, but they’re also expected to vote. I know, I feel like screaming and crying when I thank about that, too. “Voting? Are you serious? Nah, that’s not happening. Vote? Are you crazy? Don’t you know that Jesus died on the cross so that we could just hand all that shit over to god? Damned atheists and your voting!”
“Look, can’t we just get somebody in office that’ll just take care of all of this, so that I don’t have to worry about it? I mean, I don’t want to use the term ‘benevolent dictator,’ but… Well, hell, let’s just call a spade a spade and go there; say it out loud. Can’t we just get some benevolent dictator in the White House who will make it all happen, so I don’t have to worry about it?”
That short monologue, unfortunately, is all too common within the American electorate, and it is that attitude which may pose the greatest threat to this republic. Humans have a love of republicanism that functions on the democratic process, but don’t want to accept responsibility for their own governance. They don’t want to stay informed with the truth. They don’t want to maintain anything even resembling a meaningful understanding of the issues confronting their country and the world. They don’t even want to vote.
In the short term, individuals like trump come and go and their influence on this republic rises, then fades. Over the long term, though, it is dictatorship itself that draws people into its web, where it waits, like the venomous spider it is. The lure of dictatorship lies in the apparent ease of existence it offers the individual. Yet we all know that this apparent ease is merely an illusion; it is the veil of lies that conceals the evil that lies within. Fortunately, this veil is not opaque, and in fact, its transparency is its greatest flaw. Dictatorships have this lure within them, and yet its transparency of what it really entails for the individual and the nation, even those within the dominant racial/ethnic/religious/sexually oriented, and gender identifying group (dominant group), is what makes it so abhorrent.
To be the minion of a dictatorship is easy, it really is, provided, of course, that you are a member of the dominant group in your country. If you are, then all you have to do is nothing. Consciously and actively do nothing, even when you see injustice meted out to people of minority or marginalized ethnic, racial, sexually oriented, or gender identifying groups, do nothing. The state will take care to insure that you are cared for and protected against what it sees as anything infringing on your quiet, non-political life. For many people, this ‘doing nothing’ is easy, but for the rest of us it is incredibly difficult, and this difficulty is one of the factors that first lead to the rise of republicanism as a form of government in the first place.
Over time, all governments develop institutions that help propel their existence. This is especially true of both monarchies and republics, much more so than civil and military dictatorships. Monarchies develop institutions based around the blood line of a particular set of people, and if it is what is known as a ‘constitutional monarchy,’ then two parallel sets of institutions develop; one protects the privileges of the noble class, and the other protects the rights of the monarchy’s subjects. Republics, on the other hand, develop institutions based upon their body of laws, their nation’s constitutional rights, and the liberties and responsibilities of the individual.
The self-propelling institutions developed by civil and military dictatorships are based upon and centered around a single, charismatic figure, and are designed to keep that person and their inner circle in power for as long as possible. Since these persons are rarely in power more than twenty years, thirty years at the most, the institutions designed to propel their rule find it difficult to take root in the national psyche. This is what makes North Korea such an anomaly; the institutionalization of the rule of the Kim family over the decades has come to resemble an absolute monarchy more than a dictatorship.
So there is this constant, dual, opposing, pull on the individual. There is the desire for republicanism and democracy, but a republic that functions on the democratic process requires constant attention of the citizens to maintain it in a healthy state. Dictatorship, on the other hand possesses its lure because of its myth of the easy life in which the individual doesn’t have to maintain the political system that governs them. The system, the myth says, is self sustaining. All the citizen has to do is nothing. Consciously, actively, and intentionally do nothing, because if any citizen attempts to intervene with the state on behalf of others, that person will find themselves to be a target of the state, and that will not end well for the individual.
The vast, vast, vast majority of those people who secretly long for the establishment of a dictatorship in the United States understand that such a dream neither can, nor should, ever become a reality, because they know that it would mean the destruction of everything they hold dear in this world in terms of their country and what it has tried to stand for in this world. They have these fleeting desires for the benevolent dictator when they see inefficiency and ineffectiveness in their government’s efforts to right wrongs. They dream, periodically, of the dictator because they see unintentional, yet unfixed, waste of the people’s tax revenue. They dream of the dictator because someone once told them that “Well, at least under Hitler, the trains ran on time,” and they believed it without trying to find out if it was true. They believed it and purposely hid from their own minds their internal knowledge of the suffering dictators bring with them wherever they go.
Then there are those people for whom dreams of a dictatorship in America are not fleeting, because creating a dictatorship in the United States of America is their dream. They are the people who actively seek ways to subvert our democratic institutions on a daily basis in an attempt to sweep our republic into the thrash can of history. They are the people who live within the realms of white supremacy, white nationalism, and white christian nationalism. They are the people who hoard assault rifles and study how to bring down large areas of our electrical power grid as they wait for the start of their “shootin’ war.” They have always been among us, but have decided, since the political rise of donald trump, that their time to come out of the shadows is now. They actively attempt to recruit our young people into their ranks through their right-wing media outlets, the algorithms of YouTube and other social media platforms, the right’s decades-long decimation of our educational system, and, yes, their sheer visibility.
These people are the greatest threat to our republic since King George III of England, and if you cannot see this, then you are purposefully blind. If you are purposefully blind to this threat of dictatorship, then you are, whether you realize it or not, within their ranks. You are, more than likely, a “Who, me?” racist, and an “I’m the one who’s going to heaven” bigot, and you represent an even greater threat to this republic than the people described in the paragraph above this one. You are the greater threat, because you will walk out of a republic and into a dictatorship secretly thinking that you will be the one who will benefit from it as you proclaim your innocence for its occurrence.
One day you will wake up to find this republic and its democratic processes gone and say “What? I didn’t do it!” Yes, you did, because you saw it happening and purposefully closed your eyes and looked the other way. Then again, it is not just you who will bear responsibility for the destruction of this beloved republic and its democratic institutions, but the rest of us as well, because really, we all see it coming, and if we all do nothing, we will all bear responsibility.
Peace to All
Niemand