Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered: yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, 1776

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How nearly is human cunning allied to folly! The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning, know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning, he blunders and betrays. Thomas Paine, To the Citizens of the United States, 1803

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A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

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Today in America, we are faced with increasing tyranny. Many of my friends are discouraged or fearful or downright angry. The America of the Orange Menace is not the America fought for in the 18th Century.

In some ways, we are today a more promising country, having overcome long and deep injustices, notably institutionalized slavery and disenfranchisement of women and racial minorities. Yet, the influences that embedded those injustices in our society remain and to this day push back against the Progress of humanity accomplished in law over the last 200+ years. 

Independence declared in 1776 with the proclamation that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Only now we know that to reference all of humanity, male and female, poor and rich, regardless of skin color or religious creed. Even though those rights are self-evident, they were never manifested with only a simple snap of the fingers. Our history is full and rich with incidents, stories, of bitter conflict between those who would claim said rights and those who refused to allow them. 

Words fail me in an effort to succinctly document the current cultural and political environment. It is anything but peaceful. So, I'll stop here but say that Paine, the great pamphleteer, saw this time in his mind. The difference between his time and ours is a matter of labels. He heralded the Great Experiment of self-determined self-governance. Today, tyranny has returned. But now it's not called hereditary monarchy. Instead, it's oligarchy and plutocracy.

I’m not sure what America’s form of government is anymore but, it is definitely not a democracy. A Democracy provides every legal citizen of a certain age with the free and equal right to participate in a system of government that elects representatives of the people by the majority of the people, who promise to do the will of the people.

The Electoral College, gerrymandering, photo IDs and other voter suppression tactics are just some of the practices that keep America from being a democracy.

And the man who used masterful cunning to ascend to the most powerful office on the planet in 2016 ironically makes no pretense of his deceit.