For most of the history of mankind, and in many countries today, the leader has usually led a luxurious life of debauchery and corruption, oblivious to the needs of his people. Yes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. But for millennia, the People accepted that system as inevitable, so they accepted the status quo and even loved their king.
My many years of schooling purported to teach me that there was some kind of positive arrow of history, pointing in the direction of the betterment of mankind. Those courses in philosophy showed, first, a concern for the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, as John Stuart Mill argued. Then, in the Age of Enlightenment, people were seen to have rights. In order to achieve these goals, education was deemed necessary, in order to form an enlightened populace and electorate. The United States was the beacon on the hill, shining democracy into the world, and declaring that “All men are created equal.” Even in the 20th century, the rights of women and minorities were enshrined in all sorts of laws, and improvements were made.
I was brought up to see this progress. Democracy, equality, and human rights have been almost my religion, as I believed so fervently in these principles. Having been nurtured in the same educational system and American culture, I believed that other Americans had this same belief in Democracy, in Progress towards more equal rights and opportunities.
Well, now I have been proven wrong. Americans have now voted to turn their backs on Democracy and Human Rights. That is my great disillusionment from the recent election, where bigotry, discrimination, denial of rights, and deification of the supreme leader have now taken center stage.
Did someone mention ‘divine right’? We now have ‘The Chosen One’ at the helm. His followers claim that everything he says and does is inspired by God, and therefore true and correct, despite fact-checkers from the Washington Post finding some 30,573 lies since he first took office in 2017. All fake news, I guess. I have avoided the word ‘criminal’, because a ‘Chosen One’ cannot commit a crime, especially since his own hand-picked Supreme Court has decreed that he is above the law.
Americans have decided that they want a supreme leader in the old style: corrupt, debauched, caring only for himself, seeking vengeance on anyone who opposes him, above the law, but projecting strength and manhood.
Is America’s grand experiment with Democracy at an end? Has it been shown to be ineffective, now that the People have rejected it?
One issue from the election that stands out in my mind is that of tariffs. Trump was able to completely misconstrue the notion of tariffs by saying, “I’ll put a 60% tariff on all Chinese goods. Think of how much money they will have to pay us.” The American electorate shouted “Yes! Yes! Let the Chinese pay us billions of dollars in tariffs.” If Trump or the American population had even a modicum of economic education, they would immediately see that tariffs are paid by the importer, not the Chinese, and the importer passes the 60% on to the customer. This amounts to a 60% tax, which will cause inflation for the already hard-pressed Americans. But they cannot or will not see this.
My point is that a lack of economic and civic education allows the demagogue to bamboozle the people, as in the H.L. Mencken quote at the top of this page. This is exactly the argument against Democracy put forth by Plato and Aristotle, over 2000 years ago. That is where America has failed; it has allowed its education system to deteriorate to the point where the population has become like sheep, vulnerable to cruel manipulation by despots. We have reached 1984, where Big Brother can say that something is black, when it is clearly white, and be believed.
This is why I am so disillusioned with the election. I have devoted my entire life to education, and it pains me so much to see the current anti-intellectualism and downright hatred of education in society, leaving the population susceptible to this demagoguery.
It looks as though we are going back, not just to the past century, but to the sybaritic despots of millennia ago.