Respects democracy

Editor, Gettysburg Times,

If you—like me—are one of those folks who’ve felt a little impatient with democracy over the last five or six years, with elections that don’t go our way; with pandemic measures that isolate us from friends, family, and coworkers; with high prices at the pump and bad attitudes just about everywhere, you may want to take a moment and look around the world and ponder the alternatives.

How about Mr. Putin over there in Russia? With his main political opponents in jail or dead, you might think the man could get something constructive done. Instead, he’s invaded Ukraine, tanked his economy, and turned his country into an oversized banana republic. The “banana” in this case being fossil fuels and plenty of them. Speak up against his war and you just might “accidentally” fall out of your hotel window as happened to an anti-war Russian legislator while traveling in India recently.

Prefer a more “rational” authoritarianism? How about Mr. Xi Jinping, president for life in China. His zero COVID policy meant lockdowns in many cities. And locked meant locked. Mandatory testing. Jail time for those who don’t play along. Meanwhile, China’s relatively ineffective vaccines went underutilized reaching only about 20 percent of the population. Now, under pressure from demonstrators holding up blank sheets of paper in protest, Xi has “flipped” and thrown things wide open, and as you might expect, COVID is running wild.

The truth is, power corrupts, and so does powerlessness. This isn’t news. Our founders understood this and built us a constitution to deal with the enduring reality of human fallibility. It’s the simple stuff we sometimes forget: majority rule, nobody above the law, respect for the rights of minorities.

Respect for one another, maybe even a little love of neighbor, might come in handy as well. Not written into law just yet but something to hope for as we move into a new year.

Will Lane,
Gettysburg