Feb 7, 2022 5 min read

There’s a feeling in the country that things aren’t quite as they should be. A certain prescient sadness about the future of our democracy is all around us. Something that can’t be seen or touched, only felt.

People feel that things aren’t making sense anymore. That the country has somehow lost its way. That right and wrong have switched places. We feel we’ve lost something. Other countries feel we’ve changed too. Added to that, democracy is losing popularity around the world.

Things were quite different when I was a kid, growing up in the 1950s. We believed in America then. We were proud of her. We had confidence in our politicians. My grandmother never locked her doors at night. Today, the majority of Americans seem to prefer authoritarianism over representative democracy. Government is seen as the enemy.

There are three reasons why the public has lost hope.

1. Government. Politicians have very clever ways of denying people the vote. Republicans restrict voting in some democratic districts by having only one polling place where people have to stand in line for hours – going so far as making it illegal to offer voters food or drink. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Still, the public is indifferent and keeps electing the same politicians who hatch these clever schemes.

Also, there’s the creation of a false crisis to take the voter’s mind off embarrassing political moves. The country is now embroiled in Critical Race Theory. It’s not the “crisis” it’s been made out to be. But it does take voters’ minds off more important issues, such as gerrymandering districts away from the opposition to give your party the advantage.

2. Opportunity. This country was founded on the ideal that no matter who you were or what background you come from, your merit would shine through. People laugh at that ideal today. More likely than not, having the right connections or favoritism count far more than anything else. This exacerbates inequality and keep the disfranchised from moving up. Some take offense to these things and want to get even, which leads to the last problem.

3. Mass criminality. One that is only beginning to take shape in the U.S. Law enforcement works on the general principal that there are police watching every movement in every situation. Now we know there aren’t enough police to be ever vigilant. The public and the criminal element in this country have learned that secret, to the degree that people are now going in groups of 80 or more to perform a “smash and grab” blitzkrieg operation on department and other stores. How long will it be before they try a bank robbery? And adding provocative fuel to this fire, guns are easier to obtain in this country than anywhere else.

Eventually, a leader will emerge to organize the “smash and grab” rabble into a military unit and synchronize those operations to hit several places in the city at the same time, overwhelming the police force and assuring success.

Will more policemen be hired? Well, that takes money, and taxes would have to be raised. Americans and politicians are paranoid about raising taxes. We’ve never learned, as other countries have, that taxes pay for things we want, like police, fire protection, and schools. We want all these things – we just don’t want to pay for them.

The criminal element, along with the average American, has lost respect for the rule of law. The bigger question is why?

The bigger answer is that people learn by example from the workings of the public and private sectors. We see political parties using underhanded tricks to gerrymander election districts. We see a party leader deny a Supreme Court nominee one year before the end of a president’s term, yet rush a nominee through when another president has only six weeks to go, because the nominee was from his own party. Added to all of this is the 24-hour news networks. The public now has more information and it isn’t as easy to fool.

Then there are taxes. People pay taxes, but some corporations pay no taxes at all. That causes disrespect for the law, and by extension, all laws. John Kennedy famously said that “life isn’t fair.” Yes, but you don’t want to rub people’s noses in it. If justice must be seen to be done, injustice must be invisible to the multitude. But when injustice is seen in all its black glory, the full force of reality arrogantly shows its ugly face to everyone.

Probably the first thing the authorities will do is to call out the National Guard. If they are used, we will have either martial law in the entire country – or outright civil war.

When the criminal element sees success and plans on it, law and order in the U.S. will disappear very quickly. What would be the aftermath? Democracy would be dead, business would come to a halt. Schools would close outright for safety reasons. Do we want a generation of children not knowing how to read and write? Do we want to live without police and fire protection? No? Then we have to come to our senses and return to the democracy we had after WWII and right these wrongs before things go too far. In every respect, this is our last chance.

Jay Fenton is a retired film restorer and writer for VCI Magic Lantern Entertainment.