Democracy Essential to Ecology

By FRANK LINGO

In 1776, the year our democracy declared its independence, this new country only had two and a half million white people along the east coast, and an estimated 4 to 7 million Native Americans across the continent.

Looking at the vast forests of the east and later, the endless prairies of the middle, and then the giant mountain ranges of the west, it must have seemed impossible that we humans could do harm to the Earth.

That mindset of harmlessness needs a radical revision. Unfortunately, there are many folks who can’t fathom that we have done so much harm to the world that our species is threatened, as are millions of plant and animal species.

In the ensuing quarter-millennium, we have reproduced like roaches. As of 2022, the US has multiplied by 130 times to 330 million. Native American numbers have stagnated, staying about the same as in 1776, with natural rises cut down by the genocide committed by Whites.

In the same time period, the world has multiplied by about 10-fold from 800 million to nearly eight billion.

Along with humans’ rampant reproduction, came the Industrial Revolution, which has extracted huge amounts of minerals from the land to feed the ravenous manufacturing plants providing power and many new inventions. The mining has damaged the land and the logging destroyed many forests to build houses for all the new humans.

Since the feudal form of government that preceded our revolution, America has led the way for many countries to adopt a representative government. Let me give props to the Six Tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, which laid a wise framework for our democracy. But few political leaders in our young republic had much power, so the kings of capitalism had free rein to pollute the land and water with impunity, along with enslaving the Africans for free labor.

Pillaging of the planet didn’t get any better in the 20th century when the Russian Revolution led to a communist dictatorship and enslavement of surrounding states. The Chinese Revolution turned into another communist dictatorship and more mass destruction of the land and water for feeding their fervor to modernize and militarize.

Gradually, as some of the world’s democracies gained self-rule from the robber barons, we learned to control the destructive behavior of our own species.

Despite fierce resistance from the fossil fuel firms, some major reforms got enacted in America, most notably in the 1970s.

European democracies followed our lead and have gone much further to protect the planet. The world’s dictatorships lag far behind representative governments because they treat the Earth like they treat people — as tools to be exploited.

In the US, landmark legislations include the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The reforms were bi-partisan with Democrats and Republicans working together to take care of our environment.

Those were the good old days, almost half a century ago. The Republican Party has now become aggressively anti-environmental, still stuck in the mindset that we couldn’t possibly affect the wide world and regarding concerns of climate scientists as alarmist. But in stark contrast to Republican politicians, the majority of Americans favor taking action to protect the environment.

Equally terrible, Republicans have joined the cult of Trump, to the point of supporting his Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Most Republican members of Congress voted to not certify Joe Biden as president, which would have overturned the American people’s choice. This was within hours of lawmakers’ lives being threatened by the attack of the pro-Trump mob on the Capitol Building!

It’s now getting more dangerous to democracy because Republican-controlled legislatures across the country are following Trump’s demands and passing new voting restrictions that will effectively suppress the votes of minorities and enable white people to elect Republicans like Trump with pre-rigged elections.

Corporate polluters, who bankroll Republican candidates, would like that just fine, knowing there would be little enforcement of environmental laws under Republican rule.

This will result in the twin tragedies of losing our democracy and destroying our ecosystem.

So we face an existential threat to our country and our planet unless we can defeat the continuing coup against the United States by the Republican Party.

Many Americans don’t realize the imminent peril we face on both fronts. Tell folks about it, please.

Frank Lingo, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is a former columnist for the Kansas City Star and author of the novel “Earth Vote.” Email: lingofrank@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2022

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