By David Brooks on December 10, 2021
image: Global Times
President Joe Biden yesterday opened a virtual meeting on democracy that brought together representatives of more than a hundred governments, some as questionably democratic as Pakistan, Brazil and Turkey; Taiwan, a legally non-existent country, plus Juan Guaidó, a Venezuelan gentleman who since 2019 has been stealing his country’s assets with Washington’s backing, despite the fact that the UN General Assembly has recognized Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate representative of Venezuela -with the opposition of only 16 out of 193 representatives-, among other reasons, because he holds the presidency as a result of the popular will.
What has most caught the attention of mainstream press commentators is, in fact, the list of those invited to the meeting. It is strange that Biden has excluded his allies from Hungary, Ukraine and Turkey, who may be unpresentable, but who came to power in democratic elections; strange that he has not invited Bolivia, where Washington co-sponsored, together with the OAS, a manifestly authoritarian coup d’état and where institutionality was recovered thanks to the democratic conviction of its people; Strange that it has excluded Honduras, where, in spite of everything, the resoundingly democratic triumph of opposition leader Xiomara Castro in the elections of a few weeks ago was recognized.
But the strangest thing is that the U.S. government pretends to present itself as a “humble” promoter of democracy, because its political system does not fit even with lubricant in the classic definition, its record of destruction of democracy in other nations is appalling -Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, Honduras 2009, Bolivia 2019, to cite the classic list- and on top of that it has the arrogance to define who is or is not a democrat.
To put it clearly: the power in Washington is not shaped in a democratic manner, but belongs to a two-headed partycracy, in the best of cases, or even to an oligarchy: there has not been, neither in the 20th century nor so far in the 21st, a single president who did not belong to the Democratic or Republican Party, who was not a member of the political class or who did not possess a respectable fortune in millions of dollars, and the outsiders only by justifiable exception manage to reach the chambers of the Capitol. And most Americans agree with this: according to a poll published by Ap last February, only 16 percent of them consider that democracy works well in their country (https://is.gd/6HOYek).
More: if anyone is looking for electoral frauds, they can find several examples in the history of the United States, starting with that of 1876, which was characterized by the massive intimidation of black voters in states such as South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana and which, given the uncertainty of the results, culminated in the “Compromise of 1877”, which gave the White House to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and left the Confederates free rein to build a legal system of apartheid in the South; or that of 1888, when the Republican Benjamin Harrison bought votes wholesale to win the electoral college. Hayes and gave the Confederates a free hand to build a legal system of apartheid in the South; or that of 1888, when the Republican Benjamin Harrison bought votes wholesale to win a majority in the electoral college and thus win the presidency, despite the fact that the majority of the national vote favored his Democratic rival Grover Cleveland; or that of 1960, when the Democrats did alchemy in Texas and Illinois to ensure a majority of electors for their candidate John F. Kennedy; or that of 2000, when the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, set up a cheating voting system to get his brother a few hundred votes that gave him the majority of the Electoral College, which declared him president despite the fact that in the total votes the winner was the Democrat Al Gore.
Human rights? Let’s be serious: America is responsible for the atrocities of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, in its cities it is necessary to take to the streets to shout that black lives do matter, because the police corporations don’t know that, and an African-American or a Latino is far more likely to end up in the lethal injection gurney or to be sentenced to severe prison terms – whether guilty or not – than a member of the white majority; the Judiciary has forced Biden to continue his predecessor’s inhumane policy towards migrants, and both Democrats and Republicans are bent on culminating a hateful judicial vendetta against Julian Assange for having told the world the truth about a corrupt, bloody, authoritarian and undemocratic institutionality, such as that of Washington.
With apologies to Bernie Sanders’ supporters, it does not seem easy, probable or near that the neighboring superpower will be able to make the transition to democracy. What it could do, if the call for humility were genuine, is to learn to respect other countries and, since it is so interested in human rights, start observing them in its own territory.
Source: La Pupilia Insomne, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English