A Cry for American Democracy

For those like me who have come to love, to cherish and to believe in American democracy, recent years have been trying and the most recent weeks, have even been more troubling, concerning and sorrowful. 

American democracy has declined. And I submit that the Republic, which has been revered and respected for decades, is now failing under the Donald Trump administration in Washington, DC.

Previously, I never entertained any thought that the day would ever come when the Executive branch of the United States (US) government would actually insist that those who serve it, not cooperate  with the Legislative branch of the Republic. That the Trump White House would direct public servants not to cooperate with the ongoing Congressional inquiry into possible impeachment actions certainly underscores the affirmation that democracy is blatantly under attack in America.

This is deeply troubling to me for it seems that the prevailing system perpetuated by too many members of Trump's political party is worse than many other overseas systems that they themselves have criticized and continue to ostracize. I feel betrayed and duped by those who actions are contributing to democracy's failings in America and by those responsible for the erosion of the American tradition as a respected beacon of hope, opportunity, liberty and the rule of law.

As a lad in the Caribbean, I read Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto 16-times before my 16th-birthday and I was well on the way to becoming a radicalized socialist by late 1970s until I discovered theorized democracy in the early 1980s. Revolutions in Grenada, in Nicaragua and in Iran in 1979, along with the much earlier American, French, Haitian and Cuban revolutions, helped to establish my early political ideology.

However, as a young journalist in Barbados in the early 1980s, visits to the US, a sounder education of real life affairs and a professional relationship with a US diplomat, were sufficient to convince me that democracy was humanity's best hope to continuity and enough to negate the propaganda and socialist materials I received weekly from Kim II Sung's North Korea and Fidel Castro's Cuba. 

I embraced democracy and denounced other systems of governments. I've become entrenched in the principles of life, liberty, equality, opportunity and the rule of law. Yet, today, I cry for American democracy. I am ashamed of the antics used by Trump and his cohorts to circumvent and to deflect from the full intent and purposes that the US Constitution gives to Congress as a responsibility to check the Executive.

No one might see or hear of my tears for America today - no one might care, yet sooner or later, on the world stage, examples of the ramifications of the blatant fragmentation of American democracy will be felt because of the harmful isolationist, betrayal, ally-busting and system-bucking actions of the Trump administration. 

Flagrant infractions of the US Constitution will be more evident; the disposition of the Kurds will be a test; the erosion of traditional ally relationships will be exemplified and the rise of an even greater radicalism in the East will affirm that a failing American democracy has far reaching negative implications.