Americans Have Never Lived in a Democracy

The biggest myth in U.S. history is taught in the classroom and preached by Congress people and that needs to stop

Fires in the street. People protesting for equality. Men in black uniforms kidnap protesters in unmarked vans. Members of the press arrested for standing with the crowd. Those who cross borders to seek asylum are without food or water. Many die in detention centers.

As Childish Gambino put it, “This is America.”

History teachers and politicians alike have a severe habit of praising the United States as a democracy. I compare this to Trump’s slogan of “Make America Great Again”. When was America great? When was the U.S. a democracy? The truth: it never was.

Let’s first look at the birth of the country.

According to the Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal. Yet, why were there only rich, old, land-owning white guys at the Continental Congress? Where were the landless white men? The nonwhites? Half of the population is disregarded by saying only men are created equal. What about women?

Farmers, shop owners, blacksmiths, fishers, and cobblers did not vote for independence from Great Britain. The Continental Congress declared war against Britain before it unveiled its plan to the public. The Declaration of Independence was ratified without the consent of the people!

The government that stands today was not founded by the people, but rather by the wealthy elite. The U.S. government was ruled by the rich and powerful, a plutocracy if you will, when America was founded by Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, and the rest of the founding fathers.

What is a democracy?

Democracy is defined as a government where each person votes to make decisions for the entire country. In 1783, after America defeated Britain, women did not have the right to vote. Black men did not have the right to vote. Black men who were slaves were considered 60% human, according to the three-fifths compromise that was ratified into Article I of the Constitution.

But we must be a democracy now, right? Hold on! Let’s move forward a hundred years.

Let’s move to the 1910s.

In the 1910s, the four most powerful men were Vanderbilt, who controlled the railroads, Carnegie controlled oil, Rockefeller controlled steel, and J.P. Morgan controlled banks.

What does this mean? Great question! In the 1910s, those four men controlled most of the wealth of the country. Immigrants who fled Europe came to the U.S. in cramped conditions on ships, searching for freedom and opportunity. They expected to find prosperity. Instead, they found poor living conditions, poor working conditions, infections, disease, and death.

Those who survived scavenged for jobs working for the elite. When the sweatshop or the coal mine hired them, they were expected to work six days a week, twelve hours a day. Unions began popping up and workers were able to fight for fewer hours and higher pay. The key term here is that they fought for it. They did not vote. Their employers did not ask for their opinion.

To people like Rockefeller and Carnegie, they were not human. They were below human. They were replaceable. That’s how they managed to squeeze every drop of sweat and blood out of workers, literally in some cases.

In the 1910s, police were uncomfortable arresting women

Meanwhile, in the 1910s, women fought for the right to vote. President Woodrow Wilson did what he could to suppress women from protesting. For the first time on American soil, policemen arrested women for protesting. Some women were beaten. Some women were killed. Still, women prevailed and received the right to vote in 1920. All thanks to rich white women, who convinced their rich and powerful husbands to give women the right to vote.

You cannot call the U.S. a democracy in 1920. Black people still had no right to vote. Neither did Asians or Hispanics or Natives, for that matter. Every man was still not considered equal.

Let’s look at the 1960s.

As minorities protested for equal rights, the rich and powerful sought to suppress them. Again. While Martin Luther King Jr. fought peacefully, Malcolm X met the oppressors through self-defense alongside the Black Panthers. Across the country, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta protested peacefully against the rich and powerful grape companies, who fought to suppress them and their wages.

A hundred years after the Civil War, in 1964 and 1965, minorities won the right to vote. All people in the United States could vote without any forms of oppression.

Or so they thought.

People today who live in the District of Colombia lack representation in Congress. In the 1910s, laws passed to charge black people with felonies to prevent them from voting are still active today. Felons still cannot vote, regardless of the crime.

The homeless cannot vote, since they have no permanent address. People who live in territories like Puerto Rico cannot vote, despite Puerto Rico having a population of 3 million. In the 2016 election, Trump lost the popular vote but still won the election thanks to electoral college votes.

The Keystone Oil Pipeline was installed on Native American land in 2010. The pipeline caused and will continue to cause severe environmental destruction in favor of keeping the oil companies rich and Congress people funded for their reelection.

Only recently did a court order for it to cease operations, ten years after Natives confronted the American government to stop its construction. Natives expressed their concerns but went largely ignored by those in power.

Even when people have the right to vote, their area is likely gerrymandered. Look at the 15th Congressional district in Texas. It’s preposterous to believe people in the Southern area of the district have the same values, political issues, or demographics as those living in the Northern area, considering they live 200 miles apart.

Democracy is defined as a government where each person votes to make decisions for the entire country. Yet, there is still an significant amount of the population who cannot vote, or their voice heard. America is not a democracy.

History teachers and politicians must cease to praise the country’s great democratic system. It doesn’t exist. The United States is controlled by the wealthy elite; it has been proven time and time again throughout its existence. It’s time we recognize the United States for what it is: a plutocracy.

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