The Hypocrisy in Our Democracy

"What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?"

-Frederick Douglass

We say that slavery was a black dot in our history, another time, and revel in the things our predecessors had to do to achieve their goals. But we never appreciate what they had to think to achieve them. How in a time where not only was being against slavery out-of-norm, but it warranted enough aggression and danger to force many abolitionists into secrecy. The Civil War was less about freeing the slaves and more about the North and South's anger at the other's disrespect of state laws. The North would not aid in finding runaway slaves, and the South would at a point take their slaves to a free state in the name of personal property. Very few, even in the North, viewed the slaves as equals; they were viewed as competition for wages. Like Frederick Douglass we need to, "for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, . . . honor their memory," of the great thinkers of American Democracy. But in this day and age, the concept of independence has like the Whitehall Cenotaph, become another familiar object, which is rarely looked at. 

Throughout American History, we have always made our American Democracy better. It takes years and is a difficult process but it seems that agitators for democracy should not just be doing speeches like Martin Luther King Jr., and assassinations should not be an ingredient or spark for a change, like it did when Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act. 

Think about how Democracy works for the minority. It is simple maths. Whenever there is oppression among the minority voters, the majority vote will prevail. It is how slavery was perpetuated and it was how Bill Clinton a few years before we we born, in 1996 signed DOMA, which allowed states the ability to not recognize same-sex marriage. The oppressed, and in this case the LGBT community, can protest and make noise but without the help of the majority they cannot achieve equality. And that is the Hypocrisy in the Democracy. The system was such that every two years, congressmen and women spend their time not making laws and actually doing their jobs, but to fund raise for their next campaign! The rationale behind this was to theoretically give people leverage over the statesmen and woman to get what they want done. But without accountability and public scrutiny, not much can happen or will if only 57% Americans show up to vote. Without democracy, all of us live in hypocrisy and deserve every lousy government official this lousy public has voted in.