What lures
me out of the closet is the premature death of H.R.1 - For the People Act of
2019, which passed 234 to 193 in the House yesterday. McConnell has already said he won’t bring it
up in the Senate. And even if it were to
somehow magically appear on the Resolute Desk, it will be vetoed. So, it’s effectively DOA.
What’s so
scary about H.R.1 that a stake had to be driven through its neonatal heart? Here’s a quick summary of what the bill does, prepared
by Axios on March 4, 2019.
Campaign Finance:
Creates
a small donor, matching-fund system for congressional and presidential
candidates; expands the prohibition of foreign political donations; requires super
PACs and "dark money" political groups to make their donors public;
and restructures the Federal Election Commission.
Ethics:
Mandates that
presidents and vice presidents release 10 years of their tax returns; creates
an ethics code for the Supreme Court; and bars members of Congress from serving
on corporate boards.
Voting Rights:
Allows citizens to
register to vote online and be registered automatically; requires paper ballots
in federal elections; makes Election Day a federal holiday; prohibits voter
roll purging; and ends partisan gerrymandering by having independent
commissions redraw congressional districts.
In other
words, H.R.1 addresses the corruption and disappearance of representative
democracy in the United States, one of two rotting pillars supporting the system. The other rotting pillar, extreme wealth
inequality, is addressed in the House Resolution for a Green New Deal. Both the Bill and the Resolution are radical,
in that they would wrest disproportionate power and wealth from those who hold
it. Those who refuse to let go have already killed the Bill in its crib. I imagine the Resolution faces a similar demise,
should it ever be born. But maybe the
murder of the Little Blessing is actually a blessing in disguise, because it
serves as an abrupt reality check.
The reality
is that the corruption of the body politic has become so systemic that it is
now structural and cannot be fixed with gradualism, noble as the Bill and the
Resolution are. They or legislation like
them can only result from the fix; they will not provoke the fix. The fix, if one comes, is more likely to be revolutionary
than evolutionary. Any shift to a stable
and fair socio-economic-political system would likely have to involve some kind
of violence. That violence might take
the form of a climate disaster, an external or civil war, nation-wide rioting
against a presidential abuse of power abetted by a Supreme Court seen as
illegitimate, or mass civil disobedience--something that brings people to their
knees in such a dramatic way that their senses follow.
I could be
wrong, but I don’t think so, because one thing is certain. The ruling
class isn’t going to give up its privilege without a fight. They’ll deflect
and delay; deny and discount; deceive, discredit, and divide; they’ll destroy
if they can’t get the deal they want. They like things just the way they
are. The most they'll accept is insignificant, incremental change. Because they know, just as Prince Don Fabrizio Salina, Il Gattopardo, knew, "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." So, beware
of Trojan horses, because when corruption becomes structural, it can’t be
rooted out in one or two election cycles, or by changing the players, or by
tinkering around the edges. The game itself has to change.
Keep it
real!
Marilyn
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