For the last few days, I have been reading Vincent Bevins’s book The Jakarta Method. Among other things, it does a great job outlining the US’s role in subverting democracy around the world in the second half of the twentieth century. There are many ways to summarize this work, but I cannot help but focus on how it shows that historically the US is happy to support democracy in the “third world” when it means maintaining the status quo of a wealthy few in charge and a large -usually not white- population in poverty. However, when democracy means empowerment of the impoverished, the book outlines a long list of examples where our country covertly and overtly supported anti-democratic forces, coups, massacres, and genocide.
These subversions of democracy rang with an anti-Communist and anti-socialist soundtrack, one that recently seems to have made a comeback in southern Florida where it was used to encourage Cubans and Venezuelans to vote for Trump.
Bevins’s book has proved to have a timely publication for US readers. Since the 2010 census, it has been reported that the US is headed towards a situation where the collective minority population will outnumber the white population before 2050. Supporters of white supremacy fear this statistic and as each successive election suggests increased minority voting power, we are also witnessing growing attacks on our democratic process. These come in many shapes -gerrymandering, voter suppression- but recently seem to have taken more overt forms with attempts to exclude already-cast and already-counted votes in areas with large minority populations.
Today is two days before the Senate runoff elections in Georgia and three days before a congressional joint session that will formally “count” the Electoral College’s presidential votes. Today is also the day that the Washington Post published a recorded phone call of President Trump pressuring Georgia’s Secretary of State to “find” him more votes. Trump has encouraged protests in DC on January 6th and instead of focusing on the pandemic, continues to falsely claim that he won the election.
Are we seeing a homeland version of the external politics the US practiced for many years? Does democracy stop being the best system when it means the empowerment of the excluded?
These subversions of democracy rang with an anti-Communist and anti-socialist soundtrack, one that recently seems to have made a comeback in southern Florida where it was used to encourage Cubans and Venezuelans to vote for Trump.
Bevins’s book has proved to have a timely publication for US readers. Since the 2010 census, it has been reported that the US is headed towards a situation where the collective minority population will outnumber the white population before 2050. Supporters of white supremacy fear this statistic and as each successive election suggests increased minority voting power, we are also witnessing growing attacks on our democratic process. These come in many shapes -gerrymandering, voter suppression- but recently seem to have taken more overt forms with attempts to exclude already-cast and already-counted votes in areas with large minority populations.
Today is two days before the Senate runoff elections in Georgia and three days before a congressional joint session that will formally “count” the Electoral College’s presidential votes. Today is also the day that the Washington Post published a recorded phone call of President Trump pressuring Georgia’s Secretary of State to “find” him more votes. Trump has encouraged protests in DC on January 6th and instead of focusing on the pandemic, continues to falsely claim that he won the election.
Are we seeing a homeland version of the external politics the US practiced for many years? Does democracy stop being the best system when it means the empowerment of the excluded?
