Back When...

“Back when the United States was a democracy” is not a phrase that most Americans have ever hoped to use, but unfortunately the past thirty years has seen the United States slide down a slippery slope from democratic governance to corporate oligarchy. The oligarchs, both named (such as billionaires David and Charles Koch) and unnamed, have managed to create an America in which, like the old saw, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The wealth gap between rich and poor is now worse in the United States than in most of the developed world. A university study* this year concluded that government policies reflect the desires of the wealthy. The authors believe “that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”

Who knew during the Red Scare of the 1950s McCarthy era that the Republican Party would become a far greater danger to American democracy than communism? But now that Republican politicians are openly bought and paid for by corporate oligarchs, the United States is well on its way to being merely a democracy by tradition but not in fact. “Conservative” is a meaningless term in that so-called conservatives actually conserve nothing but are bent on the destruction of democracy by every means, from blatant propaganda paraded as news to a mix of legislative action and strategic inaction (witness the current do-nothing 113th Congress on track to pass the fewest substantive pieces of legislation of any congressional session in the past half-century).

Education is a key tool by which radical rightwing, anti-democratic policies are promoted and set in place. The first major effort in this regard was to undermine public education. That effort can be pinpointed to 1983 and the Reagan era “big lie”: A Nation at Risk. In spite of decades-long debunking of this commissioned government report, the message that America’s public schools are failing has persisted, giving rise to successive, largely ill-conceived waves of school “reform.” The report was the opening salvo of what has become endless war, largely promulgated by radically “conservative” Republicans on public schools. Short of an absolute takeover, it has been sufficient merely to sow chaos, to keep schools, teachers, parents, and students off balance and having to respond to rolling assaults, such as every-changing standards and a seemingly endless barrage of mandated tests. All the while, public money for schools is being siphoned off to line corporate pockets, whether in the testing industry or the charter school industry.

Average citizens have been hoodwinked—intentionally set upon by unscrupulous pundits, politicians, and policy makers, all of whom are robbing them blind, literally, as well as robbing average Americans of a prosperous, forward-looking future in a truly democratic nation. While there is still time, though full recovery will take generations, it is essential for parents and educators to reclaim their schools and for American voters to reclaim their democracy—by whatever means necessary. Currently there is a groundswell of opposition to the vast testing movement that has undermined teaching, damaged students and teachers, and stolen public school funds for private gain. This resistance movement needs to be nurtured and to spread. It is a wakeup call that everyone who cherishes this country must hear.

*Gilens, M., and B.I. Page. (2014, April 9). Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. Pre-publication. Subsequently published in Perspectives on Politics 12(3): 564-581.