Like a lot of people, I’ve been thinking about how we got here and why it caught so many of us by surprise. And like a lot of people, I keep coming back to this being a country founded in the cognitive dissonance of a slaveowner writing “All men are created equal”. And to white people - white Christians - losing their minds over the prospect of losing the majority status they’ve enjoyed since the country was founded. And I think this explanation is close, but not complete. It leaves out sexism, and how our government reflects and plays a part in sexism. And since women are half of the population, this means the dominant group - straight, white, Christian, male, abled, rich - is a minority, and our country is a minority rule country.
I’m not saying it’s as bad as apartheid-era South Africa or as bad as it used to be here. There are degrees. It’s more benign to some groups than others. But it’s minority rule. If it wasn’t minority rule, would the majority of our politicians and judges be male? Would so many rapists and abusers get a slap on the wrist or go free? Would it have taken till the 20th century for women to even have the right to vote, and still not have the right to equal pay for equal work? Every president has been straight and male. All but one have been white. All since Lincoln have been Christian, and all but one of them Protestant. Our only Catholic and only black presidents were unusually young, fit and charismatic - and were expected to make a show of being non-threatening to the ruling class. The amount varies by location, but by less than it gets made out to be. I live in one of the most liberal regions in the country. It’s heavily segregated by skin color, and women don’t have equal access to high-paying jobs. And this isn’t just free-floating in society, but in our laws and in how people (cops, judges, juries, teachers…) implement and enforce (or don’t enforce) those laws. You don’t get the full protection of law and equal access to leadership unless you’re white. Male. Rich. Abled. Straight. Christian. All of the above is practically a Get Out of Jail Free card.
So it’s not just the cognitive dissonance of slave owners talking about freedom and equality. It’s the cognitive dissonance of having a majority-rule system ruled by a minority.
I’m not saying anything new here, but for me thinking of America as a minority-rule country helps a lot of things click into place. The phrase carries weight. And when we think about minority rule, certain expectations automatically come to mind. The minority will use force to maintain their rule. Police, judicial, economic, and social force. The power imbalance will have psychological impacts on the winners. People will tell themselves minority rule is justified, or find ways to ignore it, in order to feel good about themselves. I think this is especially true for America, because since our founding we’ve prided ourselves on equality, justice, majority rule. It’s our origin story. We definitely don’t tell ourselves we live in a minority rule country. Or at least, privileged people don’t tell ourselves that. So our history isn’t just one of minority rule and injustice, but one of constant gaslighting, propaganda, and denial. Which made us vulnerable to more of it. And the fact that it isn’t as bad as apartheid helps the comfortable stay oblivious. We focus on what’s the law on paper, and minimize the reality other people experience.
I took the title of this diary from “Let America Be America Again”, by Langston Hughes. If you haven’t read it, you should. From the poem:
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
A lot of the media’s behavior in 2016 caught me off guard. But when you think of a minority rule country, you expect certain things of its press. How the press would frame things, the stories it would and wouldn't tell, who the target audience is- will all largely be in service of the minority ruling class. When a member of the ruling minority commits a crime, they’ll often get let off the hook (“this 30 year old is just a kid”, “he’s too rich”, “he’s new to being President”). And victims of minority rule will get blamed (“that kid’s toy gun looked real”, “she was asking for it”, “she was a horrible candidate”). And it wouldn’t be a mystery if the press went easier on a candidate that explicitly stood for minority rule than on a candidate that explicitly challenged it. Hypothetically speaking.
The minority rule lens also helps explain our politics. On the right, it’s pretty simple. The modern GOP is the pro-minority rule party. I'm not saying all Republicans feel this way, but it's what they're voting for and what the base rallies around. “Culture war” is about maintaining minority rule and denying equal protection to the majority. About keeping straight, white, abled, Christian men (and the women who love them) at the top and everyone else underneath. Their definition of patriotism is intertwined to the core with a sense of “their kind of people” owning the country. The Rights of the Constitution belong to them by default, and to the rest of us as they see fit, the 1st and 2nd Amendments and right to vote being prime examples. “Love it or leave it”, “anti-PC”, “religious freedom” to discriminate, the backlash to Kaepernick, “Real Americans” - all come from an attitude of ownership. They can’t handle criticism because criticism is itself a challenge to their supremacy. And since conservatives tend to think you get what you deserve in life (instilled from an early age), it follows they tend to think they’re entitled to minority rule - and that 2nd class citizens have it coming to them.
The GOP wasn’t always this bad, but after the ‘60s (the Civil Rights Act, womens’ liberation, etc), most of the hardcore pro-minority rule consolidated into the GOP. White christians in particular rebelled against school integration and reproductive rights. GOP strategists connected the bigotry to financial issues and couched it as freedom. Freedom from a government forcing their kids to go to school with black kids. Taking their tax dollars to pay for contraceptives. Using their government to attack their minority rule. To them, the government is legal and patriotic when it protects minority rule, and a lawless plot when it doesn't. So big government and deficit spending is a-ok when it’s in the service of the military and war, but treason when it’s in service of public schools and Obamacare. And voter suppression becomes justified as a way to defend American values. So they vote for demographic minority rule. And the GOP gives it to them with a side of plutocracy.
When the really pro-minority rule side consolidated, it set the stage for the rightwing media to go full-on propaganda. Which took them further and further in the derp fever swamp, with propaganda used to justify all kinds of acts that to the outside look blatantly anti-American. Voter suppression, government shutdowns, stealing Supreme Court justices… And there's a connection between Merrick Garland and the cruelty of ICE and the ACHA (pregnancy as a pre-existing condition, gutting Medicaid). Because blocking Garland was a radical move even by minority rule standards. It showed how far the GOP has gone to a dark place. And their dark place will always be cruelest to women, minorities, the disabled and the poor.
Calling the GOP the hardcore pro-minority rule party isn't to say Democrats, or the left more broadly, are the anti-minority rule side. We’re a mix. It’s not a coincidence the base of the party is women and minorities. It’s not a coincidence the resistance is so heavily female. Not a coincidence black women were the most consistent in trying to save us from Trump (we should listen to black women). But there are plenty of white people, straight people, abled people, rich people and men on the left, and we all bring our biases and indifference and obliviousness with us. And a lot of the clash on the left boils down to a group aimed at tackling all aspects of minority rule, versus a heavily straight, white, able and male group whose priorities leave demographic minority rule intact. “Class consciousness over identity politics” provides intellectual cover for the privileged to leave most aspects of minority rule unchallenged.
This isn’t to say all Bernie supporters are one way and all Hillary supporters are another way - far from it! Privilege and complacency aren’t partisan issues, let alone intra-partisan, and far too many privileged left-wingers are at least somewhat oblivious to this divide regardless of who we voted for in the primary.
And it’s important to note that these intra-party dynamics interact with how the media covers different groups in a minority-rule country. Angry, aggrieved privileged people will get more coverage, and more sympathetic coverage, than other groups - even among Democrats and even if the privileged group is smaller. The media helps the privileged stay in our bubbles, and loves to help us feel like the real victims.
This isn’t to say that we should ignore economic justice and focus solely on demographic justice. No one is saying that. And of course economic injustice hits 2nd-class citizens hardest. What we need is to attack *all* of minority rule. My America doesn’t have second class citizens.
Here’s the ending of “Let America Be America Again”. It could have been written today.
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
[Note: I edited the placement of the poem excerpts.]