I got in a conversation with a coworker last week about how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin work. He couldn't understand how they could work without some kind of central authority. I explained that the blockchain was maintained by consensus; those who earn the right to participate by cryptographic "proof of work" must agree that a new block actually fits on the blockchain and belongs there. This is what makes both the mining of new Bitcoin and exchange via transactions possible.
But this creates a vulnerability. Should a single organization manage to command 51% of the maintenance power (technically the "hash rate" of the entire network) they could rewind transactions, spend money twice, and other nefarious things. This is unlikely to be a problem for Bitcoin due to the large size of its network, but it is a real problem for smaller currencies like Etherium which could be taken over by a suitably powerful bad actor.
And that brings me to Democracy, because I realized as I was explaining this that we have the same problem.
When the US Founding Fathers created our nation, almost literally implementing Democracy 1.0, they understood that there was a similar problem. A successful democracy depends on many things, but more than anything else it depends on all participating parties to respect the system even when they lose. If enough of its participants decide that cheating the system is worthwhile, they can get together to maliciously sabotage it. This is an understanding our Founders had, which had evolved from an understanding developing in Europe about the law itself. The Divine Right was passing from fashion and it was becoming understood that the law was a consensus. If you are willing to throw the law away for any purpose, no matter how worthwhile you think it may be, you throw the law away in its entirety. Too many of you, and the law ceases to be a thing that matters.
As with cryptocurrency, there really is no central authority figure or institution holding up our government, and this was by design. All of us are going to find something we object to in the laws and actions of our society. But as long as we have a consensus and a respect for that consensus, then even when we don't personally like this or that bit of the current order an order still prevails and we can do amazing things.
But that consensus has been eroding for most of my life. It has never been perfect, as our Founders never expected it would be. Slavery was always a dagger in our side and we have struggled to deal with it even after the Civil War should have ended the matter. But the next dagger was put in by Ronald Reagan, a corporate spokestool actor playing the role of President of the United States, who dutifully recited the line "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."
When our government is structured to depend on the agreeable consensus of those we disagree with to make it work properly, this statement was the most dangerous kind of cancer imaginable. I understood this when I first heard Reagan say it in 1986. For all the nefarious things the "other guys" had been doing like the Southern Strategy, those were still rooted in the idea of making the consensus agree with their desired policy. This was a remarkable departure. This was an attack on the idea that the government should work at all, and it was dangerously effective.
Part of our 51% problem is one the Founders didn't see, the role of modern business enterprises. When the first corporations like the East India Company were created, they were chartered with a specific mission and goals. The shareholders were liable for the actions of the corporation. But in the 19th century, starting in America, truly private corporations were created which could do anything they wanted, and which shielded their investors from liability. Eventually these entities were given the same rights as human beings, even though they clearly can't be held accountable in the way human beings can. For such an entity, which cannot go to jail and for which even a ruinous fine for a person might just be considered a business expense, our democratic government became a market where they would always be the highest bidders.
It is these entities who had their puppeteers' hands up Ronald Reagan's ass, even before he become President when he was Governer of California, and before that just a spokesman for General Electric. And all they care about is making money, and getting political power so that making more money will be easier.
It was Tip O'Neil who started the tradition of governing to obstruct instead of to govern. This was actually a mostly new thing, and one even many Republicans found disgusting at the time. In our day Mitch McConnell has become the master of this way of not doing his job. But now, particularly in the House where it is easier to get a total whack job elected in a district with a lot of fringe voters, the fraction of Republican representatives who have no intention of doing their job has reached a critical fraction.
To switch metaphors, our government is also like a Jenga tower. No one block holds the tower up; all contribute and for the most part any one can be removed without catastrophe. But keep removing them one after another, and you eventually pull one that leaves it unable to continue existing. It collapses, leaving a pile of junk in its place.
After forty years of attacks from corporations, a corporatized media feeding voters lies and myths, a Republican party that long ago gave up on the idea that government should do anything but the bare minimum for its citizens as long as corporations can loot the place, things are dangerously unstable.
Trump came along and replaced the time-honored racist dog whistle with a bullhorn, and galvanized those who would tear our government down to the point where some of them actually met at the Capitol and tried to literally do it. The fact that they failed is more of a testament to their ineptness than our system's durability.
For forty years I have watched our slide into fascism and insanity, and at this point I'm not sure it can be stopped. We have a good man at the helm now but people who make Tip O'Neil look like a team player in Congress, to a critical extent. We had four years of a madman who made Ronald Reagan look like a statesman by comparison building a useless wall, alienating our allies, fucking over the environment at a critical tipping point, and appointing cabinet members whose lifelong mission had been to destroy the agency they were supposedly leading. And nobody seemed to be able to do anything about it, because the consensus was that the madman won the election.
And they are using every resource to try to make the consensus bend that way again by every form of cheating and chicanery, because they know they cannot prevail in an honest election. And they are being wantonly open about it, because why not? If they fail the consequences will be a slap on the wrist, and if they succeed they will own the world.
And we will all, black and white, be their subsistence living demoralized wage slaves. Because that's what they've always really wanted.