The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

IN the weeks and months prior to and since the American general elections five weeks ago, ‘democracy’ may have been uttered more often as at any time in recent US history. Every commentator seems to invoke the term, with widely varying applications depending on the point being made. What is democracy, anyway?

A famous definition was provided by Sir Winston Churchill, speaking in 1947 on the occasion of the 29th anniversary of a date that marks the end of World War I.

“Many forms of government have been tried,” he said, “and will be tried, in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

Democracy is indeed imperfect. And it’s also occasionally downright scary. We’re witnessing some of democracy’s scariness and imperfections right now in the US, where many seem to feel that democracy confers the right for individuals to behave like fools.

Nobel Prize-winning Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once defined democracy as government “run of, for and by fools.” One can wonder how Shaw might react to what’s presently going on in the US.

Talk of foolishness leads to how hundreds of thousands of Americans have responded and are still responding to COVID-19. On Tuesday, the US recorded 1,500 new coronavirus-related deaths and 200,000 new reported infections. Over the course of the nine-plus months of this dreadful pandemic, 15 million Americans have become infected – that’s nearly five percent of the overall population – and 285,000 have died.

Those numbers should certainly be sobering, and they are, to the many tens of millions of Americans who can process the information all around them and respond accordingly with masks, social distancing and common sense. And with a vaccine apparently nearing approval, there is plenty of reason for hope.

But the US, as we are constantly reminded, is a democracy. Its citizens have their rights, including, in many minds, the right to be a fool.

Consider the case of Bedford and Campbell Counties, adjoining Virginia jurisdictions over 100 miles and many sociological light years southwest of Washington, DC.

Virginia, like many American states, has developed sharp divisions between its urban, highly educated, diverse urban centres and its vast rural expanses where economic opportunities have dwindled in the wake of globalization and other trends and where concomitant resentment and hopelessness has long simmered and is now boiling over.

Like The Bahamas, Virginia is currently led by a physician. Its governor, Ralph Northam, is an Army veteran and paediatric neurologist. In response to spiking COVID cases in his state, the governor recently imposed new restrictions on social gatherings that could pose public health risks as potential “super spreader” events.

Campbell County Supervisor Charlie A Watts II knew just how he wanted to respond. “Free people have a duty to push back against these restrictions,” Watts said. Northam’s restrictions are “simply not the role of government in a free democratic society,” Watts said.

Another Campbell County supervisor, Matt Cline, described his council’s actions to the Washington Post as aimed at insuring freedom from overreach by the federal government.

“What’s the next thing that’s going to give the governor the desire to restrict our rights?” he asked.

The Campbell County supervisors found strong local support for their views. One speaker at a recent meeting said “I look at what has happened in my America recently. I am ashamed. Thank you for protecting the people you represent by not restricting their freedoms.”

A 79-year-old at the same meeting dissented. “This Constitution I hold in my hand here won’t protect you against the virus,” he said. “It is killing people. The virus is not going away. This is not a political thing.”

The audience laughed. The older man reportedly adjusted his mask, shook his head in frustration, grabbed his cane and hobbled out of the meeting.

Neighbouring Bedford County council members were also offended by Northam’s measures. They were reportedly mulling passage of a resolution that would have withheld public funds from the local sheriff if he attempted to enforce the governor’s public health mandates.

In the state capital, meanwhile, the state’s Democratic attorney general reminded reporters that local officials such as Cline and Watts are not charged with enforcement of the governor’s mandates. (State health agencies have that responsibility).

“We do not expect that political statements by local officials will make a practical difference in terms of enforcement,” the attorney general said.

Let’s hope so.

Parents pull the plug on teacher’s lesson

Donald Trump racked up his biggest vote percentage margin in any state four years ago in West Virginia. He improved that margin by a whopping ten percent last month, winning 79 percent of the vote.

West Virginia is not a liberal hotbed.

Still, the recent report of the tribulations of a respected middle school civics teacher is a bit surprising.

Greg Cruey is that teacher. He lives and works in McDowell County, the southernmost county in West Virginia and a place where statistics do not paint a rosy picture. In 2013, McDowell County had the lowest average life expectancy in the US. Two years later, with the opioid epidemic still devastating the US, this county recorded the highest rate of drug-induced deaths in the nation.

The demise of the coal mining industry has ravaged McDowell, and its 20,000 residents and 535 mountainous square miles are served by only two full grocery stores.

But McDowell’s residents consistently reject the Democratic Party of big government and a more secure social and economic safety net. They, and apparently their children, strongly favour Trump and the Republicans.

Teacher Cruey told reporters recently that he has never in 20 years before now experienced such resistance to understanding and accepting the results of an election.

A few days after the US election, Cruey was sharing with students Joe Biden’s acceptance speech. He was startled to learn that the parents of some of his students who are still learning virtually from home had disconnected their computers from his lessons. No more Cruey classes.

“One parent sent me a message to say that her child was not going to be listening to any stuff about Biden and Harris,” Cruey said.

Someone asked the teacher if he feared threats of retaliation like those recently directed at officials in Georgia and Michigan.

Cruey said he feels he has been indemnified to some extent by the fact that “I’m a church musician and my wife and I work at a Christian camp in the summer. I think people who disagree with my Democratic politics reserve judgment because they know me.”

Like any good teacher, Cruey tries to encourage a search for the truth. He recommends that his students try to verify all the internet myths and conspiracy theories they see on their computers.

One of his favourite suggestions for objective news and reporting is the BBC’s website.

Trump continues to double down

While Cruey and countless other conscientious school teachers are trying to make sense of what is happening in American politics in these waning days of Trump, the president continues to double down on a bad bet.

Even with sycophant in chief and presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani now sidelined with the coronavirus, the US president continues to rant on about how his rightful re-election was stolen from him. He has now even managed to involve the Supreme Court, which this week to hear his latest bogus lawsuit.

It’s hard to say how his appearance over the weekend at a largely unmasked rally in Georgia will affect the pivotal US Senate runoff elections there in less than a month. But it’s difficult to make the case that he is helping the two incumbent GOP candidates whose success will determine control of the Senate for at least the next two years.

The last word on democracy should go to American author and commentator H L Mencken, who died 70 years ago.

“As democracy is perfected,” Mencken wrote prophetically, “the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.

“We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”