The Times of Israel published my new article “The Wounded American Democracy”
A turbulent presidential race in the US was supposed to end with the elections, but in fact, the political scenario is far from calm and quiet. While half of America claims victory and vigorously celebrates, the other half feels betrayed, drained, robbed, and questions and challenges the democratic system. What kind of changes are required to recover the credibility of a system that has shown imperfections?
As President Trump’s legal team deals with court challenges and expects ballot recounts in six battleground states, the claims of fraud have overshadowed the American electoral process.
Democratic elections have brought the world human development, freedom of expression—where everyone is allowed to express their opinions and divergences fearlessly, vote, demonstrate—but now we see the system that was conceived as the panacea to listen to people’s voices, all voices, has lead to millions of people in the same country to become radically opposed to each other, split in a near symmetrical half, completely polarized.
So maybe the solution is to officially divide the country in two, a Democratic territory and a Republican land? They may relocate according to their political preference and visit each other once in a while, go sightseeing from one side to the other, even have some trade relationship between both lands, divide industry, the economy, society in general. If it is not possible to coexist, then splitting up the country seems to be the only alternative.
Can you imagine such a scenario? Clearly, tearing the country apart and dividing it in two pieces is not possible, and even if hypothetically it were an alternative, a clear cut division would separate families, dismantle communities, split every atom in every element of creation, and pose enormous disbalances and great danger. Alienation is the cause of social disruption and eventually may lead to war.
We have reached a dead end where democracy is questioned and there is no indisputable majority that determines the nation’s future. Today’s society demands results that consider and represent everyone. Otherwise, the credibility and legitimacy of the country’s leadership will be undermined, and the rift between the two camps will continue to deteriorate. The new reality requires all sides to sit together in a circle like the indigenous people of the country used to gather in a circle around a campfire to find solutions to their most pressing problems, to think and decide together about what should be done.
The solution cannot be to give up to everyone’s stand on any issue. It is not realistic and shouldn’t be. When one side overpowers the other, the outcome eventually will be destruction. Rising up against each other wishing to annihilate those opposing one’s views contradicts nature, acts against the supreme force that created two sides in the world in the first place. Nature’s purpose for creating this division is to lead humanity to strive for connection and build a new reality in common through a sense of mutual guarantee. This goal can be achieved when people elevate themselves from their instinctive egoistic desires and consciously put aside their particular interests for a collective benefit.
How can someone want to think of others if we are naturally inclined to think only about ourselves? Because the alternative is ungovernability, collective chaos, distrust, rivalry—all conditions that are a recipe for disaster. And when there is chaos no one gains but all lose. Therefore, it is in everyone’s best interest to realize that the wounds of US society can be cured when Americans realize how interdependent they are. Nature shows us the perfect electoral system. It chooses connection over dissolution, unity over division, integrality over dispersion. So if we want to live peacefully next to each other and succeed as a society, we only need to learn from this example.
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