by Abdul-Hakim Shabazz
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about our democracy.
Yes, I know it’s an election year, so paying attention to national, state and local issues is my job, and it’s what I’m supposed to do. But this isn’t the usual political punditry and somewhat informed speculation that I usually do; this has been a more “philosophical” look at our current political system, and it got me thinking: do we still deserve our democracy?
And yes, I know we are not a pure democracy but a constitutional republic, but work with me on this one, okay?
I asked the question primarily because of what’s been going on as part of our national discussion. Whether it was the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol where folks weren’t happy with the election results and tried to overthrow the government. Yes, I went there.
And even before January 6, and Donald Trump, for that matter, our politics were already becoming more polarized as the fringes from both the far left and far right dominate what attempts to pass for political discourse in this country. Not only do our national politicians spend an unnecessary amount of time cow-towing to these people, but the national media plays a significant role in this as well.
As I jokingly say, there isn’t one story so small regarding Donald Trump that MSNBC won’t talk about it, nor is there one story so big about Trump that Fox News won’t.
The end result, at the national level, is a lot of regular people get turned off and want nothing to do with our political system. As my lovely wife mentioned to me the other day, “Why should people spend time paying attention to a system that they don’t think listens to them, and if they did, it wouldn’t matter because they would just give us lip service?”
And it’s more than just the national level.
The recent Indiana Supreme Court decision to stay a lower court’s order regarding the constitutionality of a state ballot access law where candidates have to run in two consecutive primaries or get a letter from their county chairman to say they are in good standing, don’t help in drawing more voters to the polls, in fact, it’s likely to have the opposite effect.
The court hasn’t issued a decision yet, but the fact that as long as this rule stays in place, approximately 81 percent of Hoosiers could never run for public office as a Democrat or Republican because they don’t vote in primaries. And I still maintain the state law is basically age discrimination because there is no way an 18-year-old could run for office, even though they may be statutorily qualified to do so, but because it was virtually impossible for them to run as a Democrat or Republican because they weren’t old enough to vote. But at the same time, we complain about young people not getting involved in politics.
And don’t even get me started on how expensive political campaigns have gotten that the only people who can afford to run these days are millionaires and billionaires.
As Benjamin Franklin stated in 1787” to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin responded, “A republic if you can keep it”. It makes me wonder not so much if we can keep it, but do we want to?
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney and the editor and publisher of Indy Politics.
