America at its Core

The odds that the social upheaval we are currently experiencing will succeed in changing the very nature of this country are long and face a very steep uphill battle. The country was founded by very wealthy, slave owning White Christian men who, in their comradery, conspired to separate themselves from the British crown for the sole purpose of protecting their fortunes from the heavy taxation being levied on their wealth.

As with everything in the American experiment, the guiding principal has been and remains the accumulation and preservation of wealth. One need simply look around the room of this depiction of a gathering in Philadelphia to understand what these gentlemen meant by the seemingly noble words that they inscribed to announce their intention to seek independence…the “all men are created equal” principal which is thought to be ingrained into the very nature of what it means to be an America. The “men” they referred to applied not to anyone unlike themselves. Not women, not indigenous peoples, rarely Jews or other religious groups and certainly not Blacks upon whose backs their wealth was made. I dare say it was not even within the realm of consideration by any of these men to extend their recognition of their having been created equal beyond those in the room and those beyond for whose interests they spoke. All that they argued about was the mechanism for ensuring that their voices would be heard equally, whether they stood in that room in Philadelphia or on their plantations or homesteads up and down the eastern seaboard of what was to become the United States. That ethos and that ethos alone provided the framework for the construction and framework of the government that was to be formed as an outgrowth of their collective declaration that they would no longer pay tribute to a monarch an ocean away.

So strongly is this belief held that we have come to violence  on our own soil in its name twice over the course of our history, the first, of course, was in 1776 when we the nation took up arms to make clear our intention to separate ourselves from our British patrons. The second was in 1861 when the southern aristocracy concluded that their wealth, earned on the backs of slaves, was being threatened by a central, Federal government that, it was felt, had over-reached in its efforts to tax and otherwise control the agrarian economy upon which the southern aristocracy had built its fortunes. In both rebellions, it was not those who held the wealth who died on the fields of Chancellorsville or Gettysburg but, as always, common men who would not share in the fruits of victory should it come to pass.

 

It is this one single imperative…that the nation was founded for the sole purpose of facilitating the accumulation and preservation of wealth by a minority comprised of White Christian men…that has defined us through the centuries and continues to this day and it is against this very core imperative that we fight today to change our very nature. One can only hope that the short-term response to an epidemic of killings and harassment by citizens and police of the Black community will gain traction and result in what would be a seismic shift in the nation’s ethos. Aligned against any chance for change are forces which long concluded that any such change…indeed even the recognition that racism remains perhaps the one fundamental flaw in the nation’s construction…is a threat to a way of life so deeply ingrained in the nation’s basic founding principles that as before it is worth fighting against, even if that fight should turn to violence. The Republican party has spent years pursuing a “southern strategy” that not only succeeded in turning southern politics from a historically Democratic bias to one now fundamentally Republican and conservative, those efforts have now succeeded so well that the thought of violence is no longer an inconceivable. 

The Republican party has succeeded in gaining support from those individuals who are most in need of a strong centralized government that can and has provided subsidies for food, jobs, education, infrastructure and security. The incredible result is that tens of millions of southerners vote against their own self-interest by siding with a political party that has flexed its political muscle by awakening the ghosts of those plantation owners who so long ago controlled the southern economy and fought the federal government to keep the fruits of slave labor on the backs of poor southern whites who fought under the banner of the Stars and Bars. 

Having successfully pressed this strategy in the South, I suppose it is understandable, at least from an intellectual standpoint, that the Republican party would resist any pressure to acknowledge that what they are actually supporting when they stand with those southerners still lamenting loss of their “way of life”, is a way of life built upon the backs of slaves and the attitudes which fostered that way of life. While support for that way of life has waned in southern urban centers it remains alive and well in the rural south where those populations are most vulnerable to a "the-South-will-rise-again" pitch because educational opportunities have been reduced by Republican governments that press for smaller governments at the expense of those most in need. With such fertile grounds to conquer, the Republican party continues to press a fight over long-since resolved grievances, touting a "Lost Cause" past and, in so doing, finds itself standing with those who continue to long for a way of life which has long since passed from our national experience.

Perhaps it is this alone which drives the Republican refusal to acknowledge that the racism which sprung from that way of life still exists fearful that by doing so it will lose the support of this “base” which it has worked so hard to cultivate. Perhaps it is also its many patrons who continue to pour tens of millions of dollars into campaign strategies that continue to target these states as essential to any strategy for regaining the White House.

 

Those words were written in the throes of an unseemly Republican primary season while we were getting our first view of Donald Trump the politician. The past 3 ½ years have demonstrated clearly the damage that can be wrought by a government which has built its entire domestic policy structure around not only enforcing this philosophy but using it to great advantage, tearing the country apart for political gain. 

 

I conclude where I began. Make no mistake. Despite the passing of 250 years, little has happened to alter the fundamental nature of who we are as a nation. While we aspire to extend the meaning of “all men are created equal” to every living soul in the country, the truth remains that by and large the meaning of those grand words inscribed by the “founders” remains irresolute. The forces aligned against change are great and they are serious about ensuring that the principles first stated in the backrooms of meeting halls in and around Philadelphia so long ago remain unchanged. Still, the opportunity for real change exists. We stand at a crossroad which may very well determine the nation’s fate. We do appear ready to finally embrace an unfettered and broad interpretation of that one core principal. Whether we as a people have the fortitude to see it through against all odds remains the ultimate question.