Losing my country

The Founding Fathers were not a trusting group.  They certainly didn’t trust the people.  Only one-half of one of the three branches was elected directly by the voters, and those voters were almost all white property-owning men.

The saving grace of the Fathers was that they also didn’t trust themselves.  They feared concentrated power.  The Constitution sets up three branches with checks and balances, different term lengths, different methods of selection.

I wonder what they would think of the current situation.  What would they think of the Senate refusal to vote on Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court?  Or dark money?  Or the closed door secret Trumpcare bill writing?  Or a completely politicized Supreme Court?  

I know we have gone through dark times.  The Alien and Sedition Act attempted to punish speech.  The U.S. has broken every treaty made with Indian tribes.  Thousands of black men were lynched in the South between the 1880s and the 1940s.  The Red Scare of World War I and the McCarthy period in the Fifties were travesties. 

Nonetheless, even in our darkest periods, there were politicians and institutions that resisted.  Who resists now?  The Senate?  The House?  State legislatures?  The Supreme Court?

There are pockets of resistance.  Some of the press.  A few of the states.  Nonetheless, as a student of political science, I don’t think we have been this close to losing our democratic institutions and our way of life since the Civil War.  Even during the Civil War the North was defending the Constitution.  

Now that Constitution is under attack nationwide.  What makes it even worse is that the people who would bring it down (Trump, McConnell, Ryan, the NRA, the Koch Brothers) pretend they are defending it.