The US Must Declare Independence From Political Idolatry

Which Democracy?

“Record Low in U.S. Satisfied With Way Democracy Is Working,” a Gallup news item reported in January of this year. About one in four voters are satisfied with the democratic process in this country. That fact’s been lamented by many political and media figures, but I see it as a hopeful sign.

I bow to no one when it comes to my criticism of Trump, who represents incipient fascism. But I’ve always disliked the phrase, “Democracy is at stake in this election.” It begins with the obvious question: If the Democrats really believe that, why didn’t they field a stronger candidate? The Republican plan for the next presidency is called “Project 2025.” The Democrats’ plan seems to be the 25th amendment.

And when they say, “Democracy is at stake,” a lot of people are likely to reply, “What democracy?” Democracy is measured by the range of choices it offers, and by its independence from oligarchical control.

American democracy is in crisis on both fronts. Billionaires and dark-money PACs dominate primaries, as well as general elections. The result is stark. Where is the party or candidate who promises to end the genocide in Gaza, provide medical care for all, end poverty, and ensure that everyone who wants to work has a job?

As the world is battered by storms, floods, and fire, where’s the party that stands for bold climate action?

The Perfect and the Good

I’ve been around enough to know that this kind of talk annoys a lot of people. These goals are “purity tests,” we’re told. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Yes, politics often calls for tactical choices. But incrementalism has become a mantra, its own kind of idolatry. The need for practicality must always be balanced by the need to demand more, and better, than what we have today. Incrementalism is a tactic that has become an ideology.

“Don’t compare me to the Almighty,” the current president likes to say, “compare me to the alternative.” But it doesn’t take the Supreme Being to achieve these Earthbound goals. Every other developed country in the world has a national healthcare system, for example. Those systems are the product, not of divine intervention, but of political choice.

To blame voters for their anger and dissatisfaction—whether it’s with their economic conditions, their precarious lives, the epidemic of addiction, or a party’s chosen candidate—is to sacrifice true democracy on the altar of its idolatrous imitation.

In April, Gallup reported that “the United States now lags behind most of the other leading industrialized nations in the G7 across a range of Gallup indicators” that include “confidence in the national government and key institutions—including the military and the judiciary—as well as the ability of its people to meet their basic needs.”

Here in the U.S., Gallup’s study found that only “21% of those who did not attend college” are satisfied with our democracy, which makes sense. Our system has failed them. They may be gravely misguided about why they’ve been abandoned, but that’s also understandable. They’ve been lied to by the only party that’s speaking plainly to their real and imagined fears.

On the other end of the spectrum, says Gallup, “Americans with postgraduate education tie Democrats as the subgroup most likely to be satisfied, at 38%.” That makes sense; the system is more likely to be working for them. But it’s worth noting that there is widespread dissatisfaction even in this group and among Democrats.

The Believers

To blame voters for their anger and dissatisfaction—whether it’s with their economic conditions, their precarious lives, the epidemic of addiction, or a party’s chosen candidate—is to sacrifice true democracy on the altar of its idolatrous imitation. President Joe Biden’s debate performance wasn’t just the failure of one individual. It was the latest sign of decrepitude in a cracked and dust-covered political idol.

Truth itself becomes elastic when we idolize an individual or a party. We’ve seen it happen in discussions of the economy. Too many Democratic Party supporters, in politics and the media, insist that working people are delusional for believing they’re in economic pain. They cite short-term economic trend lines and ignore the long-term decline and precarity that forms the living experience of most working people.

The resulting economic message—“Things are good, and you numbskulls are too dumb to see it”—isn’t just inaccurate. It also reinforces a sense of condescension that many working people feel when they’re lectured from the mainstream left—the sense that powerful and distant people dismiss what you’ve seen, heard, and believed, because they think they’re smarter than you are.

Over the past year, that sense has been reinforced every time a politician or talking head has insisted that the president is just as sharp as ever and that to believe otherwise means you’ve been duped—or that you’re an ageist who hates old people, or an ableist bigot who’s overreacting to a simple stuttering problem.

The scent of condescension is one of the Democratic Party’s biggest political weaknesses. It has only been reinforced by the defenses of Biden’s candidacy we’ve heard in the past week. It’s a classic case of, “Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?”

Independence Day

Why do so many smart people make such basic mistakes? Part of the answer lies in political idolatry, the belief that we alone possess the one real truth. Information that challenges idolatry—whether the idol is a party, a president, or a predilection—induces cognitive dissonance. And, as with all such beliefs, people who question it become heretics.

We don’t burn heretics anymore; we just flame them on social media. That’s progress, I guess, but it’s not enough.

The electorate’s widespread disillusionment with democracy is an indictment of our current system, but it’s also an opportunity to speak to people’s needs and organize for real change. That means defying some long-held beliefs and institutions, including economic orthodoxy, incrementalism as ideology, and our irrevocably corrupted system of campaign financing. That’s a tall order, for sure. But the alternative is a political landscape where only demagogues address public discontent, using only lies, crushing the spirit and paralyzing the body politic while the world continues to burn.

Everyone has idolatries. I’m still working on mine. Sometimes I cringe at things I’ve written or said in the past. But I’ve come to believe that, as paradoxical as it sounds, the best way to act on my own beliefs is by first challenging them—with the hope that one day I can achieve independence from political idolatry.