Muristek
The US senate presents a long-term threat to US democracy | Thomas Zimmer
The so-called ‘world’s greatest deliberative body’ is deliberately and inherently undemocratic
Enabled by Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, a united front of US Senate Republicans dealt American democracy a massive blow last week by blocking the Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act. The US Senate: a place where desperately needed federal voting rights legislation goes to die – a spectacle unworthy of what Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin called “the world’s greatest deliberative body”.
Raskin was referring to the Senate’s reputation not necessarily in an affirmative, but in an aspirational way: he wanted to issue a challenge to the senators to live up to this glorious notion. Nevertheless, the mythical idea of the Senate as “the world’s greatest deliberative body” is widely held among the country’s political elite – the kind of American exceptionalism that still very much warps the perspective on US history and politics.
Thomas Zimmer is a historian and DAAD visiting professor at Georgetown University, where he focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States.
Continue reading...