case with virtually every other animal species on Earth .
When fish swim , bees swarm , or birds migrate , it seems like their actions are coordinated telepathically . In fact , each wingbeat or tail twitch left or right is noticed as a “ vote ” by those around them . When more than 50 % of the group are twitching to the left , for example , the entire school , swarm , or flock veers to the left . Democracy .
When a mob showed up at the US Capitol threatening to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House , it was because they genuinely believed Donald Trump ’ s lie that the majority of Americans had voted for him . People will put their lives and their freedom at risk to right such a perceived minority-rule wrong .
Minority rule almost always ends up producing unfair results that are resented by the majority . We ’ re seeing this today with a Supreme Court dominated by four right-wing justices who were appointed by presidents who lost the majority vote and who were confirmed by Republican senators who represent 41.5 million fewer Americans than the Senate ’ s Democrats .
Minority rule has taken over the White House :
We saw it when Bush and Cheney lied us into the war in Iraq after being put in the White House by five Republicans on the Supreme Court , despite having lost the vote to Al Gore by a half-million votes . It provoked the largest demonstrations against a presidential action in the history of the world at the time .
Similarly , when millions protested Trump ’ s inauguration , it was motivated in large part by the widespread knowledge that he ’ d lost the 2016 election by nearly 3 million votes . Unfairness infuriates people , and rightly so .
Minority rule has taken over our Supreme Court :
A small group of wealthy ideologues spent millions to pack our courts , and we ’ ll see the backlash in our streets this weekend as people across the nation come out to protest Alito ’ s assertion that Sir Matthew Hale ’ s 1670 interpretation of British witchcraft laws should determine the fate of America ’ s 21st century women .
Minority rule has taken over Congress :
Democrats in the Senate represent 41.5 million more Americans than do Republicans . Yet that minority of Republicans , using the filibuster , have been able to stop everything from voting rights to healthcare to rebuilding our nation from the damage of 40 years of Reaganomics ’ neoliberalism .
A total of 77.3 million Americans voted in 2020 for Democrats for the House of Representatives ; only 72.8 million voted for Republicans .
Multiple states where the statewide vote is within a point or three of 50 / 50 ( including Florida , Michigan , Pennsylvania , Texas , Georgia , Arizona , North Carolina , Kentucky , Louisiana , and Wisconsin ) send far more Republicans than Democrats to the US House than their votes would dictate because of Republican gerrymanders .
This fall , things will get even worse because of 2021 gerrymanders , meaning that when over half of Americans again ( if history and polling holds ) vote for Democrats for the House , the GOP will nonetheless likely take control of that body .
Minority rule has taken over multiple states :
Most of the states listed above suffer from the same problem in their own legislatures . In statewide elections , because most voters choose Democrats , all but two of those states ended up with Democratic governors ; nonetheless , even though only a minority voted for Republicans , their legislatures are still Republican-controlled because of gerrymandering .
Whenever a minority rises up and tries to rule over a majority , particularly if that rule violates basic principles of fair play and empathy , the result is conflict . In most minority rule situations , that conflict is managed with the power of guns and jail cells : nations that were once democracies — like Russia ,
Turkey , Egypt , the Philippines , Hungary , Venezuela , and others — become police states where dissent and political activity are not tolerated .
We saw Donald Trump , who lost the majority vote in 2016 , try this when he ordered Defense Secretary Mark Esper to have our military shoot protestors in the streets of Washington , DC .
We humans , like most animals from the simplest to the most complex , are wired by evolution for majority-rule to make the decisions that will best serve our immediate interests as well as preserve our species .
The principal idea of democracy is that there is wisdom in numbers . That the majority is more often right than any minority . As Aristotle wrote in his Politics , “[ I ] t is possible that the many , though not individually good men , yet when they come together may be better , not individually but collectively ….”
If we want to preserve this nation , we must try actual representative democracy . Whoever wins the majority vote becomes president , as 15 states and the District of Columbia — representing 195 electoral votes — have chosen ( states representing another 75 votes are needed to end the Electoral College ).
Expanding and unpacking the Supreme Court would restore fairness and balance to the head of that branch of government , and adding Washington , DC and Puerto Rico as states would help ease the unfairness of representation in the Senate .
And Congress must pass a federal mandate that every state cease gerrymandering and use nonpartisan redistricting commissions like California and several other Democratic-controlled states have already done to ensure fairness and equal representation .
Republicans not only cling to minority rule , they now want to go to the next step and impose a neofascist Taliban-style government on America run by the morbidly rich and fanatically religious .
If the Democratic Party is serious about preserving America as a constitutional republic , they must put democracy at the top of their priority list .
The Trial Lawyer x 89