Fifty Shades of Red & Blue

Since its beginning, America has been a divided nation. You can read about the debates online. James Madison said, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Hamilton and Madison believed in a government deriving its powers from the consent of the governed while maintaining stability. They aimed to balance the people's will with wisdom and experience, protecting against what they called the tyranny of the majority. What do we mean by the tyranny of the majority?

The tyranny of the majority is a situation in which the majority's interests or opinions overpower and oppress the rights and interests of the minority, leading to unfair treatment or lack of protection for minority groups.

There, in a nutshell, is the argument that MAGA and other extreme and semi-extreme right-wingers are making. There is an element of truth to that lamentation. It is of their own making, but they don't necessarily see it that way. If you look at the history of this nation, for the most part, the conservatives with their hardline approach to governing have dominated the political landscape, almost from the beginning.

The conservatives made most of the rules throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The American mantra was "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps."

By 1830, one million Americans, most of them enslaved, grew cotton. The business owners, plantation owners, and eventually the robber barons of industry dictated much of the expansion and growth of the United States. Between slavery and the importing of destitute migrants to work in the fields, build the railroads, work in sweatshops, often with maybe only a Sunday off to go to church, class distinctions between the haves and the have-nots were as real as those our founders rebelled against under the King of England.

A tiny elite held an extreme concentration of wealth and had enormous economic and political power, while most lacked opportunities to thrive. Robber Barons were wealthy American businessmen who used questionable practices in the 1800s and 1900s. John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie built huge companies and became rich using aggressive business tactics. Jay Gould and James Fisk used unethical methods like bribery and manipulation to control the Erie Railroad.

Corporate greed is nothing new in America. Anyone who has been the victim of restructuring, hostile takeovers, and other downsizing efforts can attest to this. Nevertheless, some say that the country was built on the efforts of people like the men mentioned above, all of whom were citizens of the United States. Some of the individuals were also philanthropists, especially upon retirement. However, the fact that they gave money out later in life does not erase their slave-master approach.

These were the people who dominated the political and social environment through tyranny of the majority until the 1920s and 30s when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression hit not just the U.S. but crippled the world. To use a psychological term, this was a significant emotional event for the people in the U.S. and worldwide.

Progressive dissenters along the way included people like Eugene Debs, Jane Addams, Louis Brandeis, and Florence Kelly. But theirs was an uphill battle against a juggernaut of very wealthy and influential people, mostly men.

Along came Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal in 1932. He championed the working classes and the downtrodden at the expense of the captains of industry, who, until that time, had gained great wealth in an atmosphere almost devoid of regulations. Suddenly, workers' rights, women's rights, children's rights, and civil rights were front and center in the thinking of our government. Monopolies were broken up due to violations of federal law. Many labor unions, trade groups, and professional, civic, and religious associations were founded. They improved the lives of individuals and communities.

Except for a couple of breaks with the election of Nixon and later Reagan and the Tea Party, after the conservatives held sway for most of the first 150 years of our nation, the more liberal elements of our society invoked their version of tyranny for the last almost 100 years. The leaders worked on various overlapping issues that characterized the time, including labor rights, women’s suffrage, economic reform, environmental protections, and the welfare of poor immigrants.

So, both sides see the other side as tyrannical when they hold power. The conservatives lean toward money and big business, a pseudo oligarchy, and away from support for civil rights. They believe the wealthy folks should be in control. The progressives look at the history of oligarchs and the suffering of the lower classes under their control and are afraid we'll return to an era of suffering and pain for the lower classes.

This is an awful lot like marriage. A man and woman from two different families, sometimes two different nationalities, with different religions, tastes in food, music, and humor, come together and try to form "a more perfect union." I think many of us know how difficult that task can be and that to succeed, it takes a lot of compromise on both sides of the family. It seems that is what we face, and the questions we must ask and answer are quite similar.

a) Do we want to be married? Do we want the United States of America to succeed as a democracy and nation?

b) What is our vision for this marriage? That question is presumably partly answered by our Constitution. Maybe we need to review that old document and ensure it still applies, or make a few revisions to keep it current.

c) Each party needs to list their priorities, ranked from most important to "it would be nice to have".

d) Then, with that list, the discussion has to occur to see what each side is willing to compromise on.

Going back to my bell curve, the extremists on the right and the left have to have a seat at the table. They have to be allowed to make their case. They need to recognize they are on the outer limits of societal opinion, and it will take some great salesmanship to win their points.

The folks in the center of the curve are likely to find compromise fairly easy. As you move further from the center in each direction, agreement will become more difficult. This is what a democracy is all about. This also assumes we believe in a democracy - not everyone does. Some will claim that they do, but they really mean a society that totally agrees with them. The further we move from the center of the curve in either direction, the more likely we are to encounter folks who narrowly define our democracy as only what they believe.

I believe, or am hopeful, that most of the curve can agree on how we should run our nation. Regardless of what we decide, some people will feel that they are victims of a tyranny of the majority, and they will be right. The only way to not feel that is by finding a solution that pleases 100% of the population, and that is unlikely ever to happen.

Are we, as a nation, ready to find the best answers for the most people as humanly possible? If not, our grand experiment in a representative democracy is probably doomed. We will continue to bicker and live in gridlock for generations to come.