Day 58: Fork in the Road (Or, Supremacy's Last Stand)
Why this Pivotal Moment in American History Is Every Bit as Consequential as the Civil War.
Willie Tolliver’s four-minute telling of Selma’s Bloody Sunday.
Back in the late ‘90s, I had three experiences that radically altered my sense of where we, the American people were headed and the kind of nation we were becoming.
The first was seeing, in real-time, the radicalization of Christian ideology as it became increasingly militant; the new code-speak for segregation, which, in the years after the Civil War, arose as the new code-speak for dehumanization. Churches that were, a couple of years prior, deeply committed to making amends for racism were suddenly insisting racism didn’t exist, denying that James Byrd’s and Matthew Shepard’s murders were hate crimes, and picketing the funerals of people who’d died of AIDS.
The second was discovering how both our demography and our psychographics were shifting, and what those shifts meant for both social alliances and political power. This redrawing of the lines was at work when white-identifying Charlie, my mailman, during our first conversation, asked me if I’d noticed how many immigrants were moving into the neighborhood, before going on to say, “I mean, the white man and the black man, we built this country up together, and now here they come trying to take it away from us…”
And, the third was the dawning realization I had while watching the film Gattaca with my friend Bob Jackson, and how their world’s system of grouping people into “Valids” and ”Invalids” helped me make sense of how we’ve done the same thing, and that we’d been doing it, in one way or another, since the dawn of the revolution. I started to get how the most important thing we could deprive people of was an ownership stake in their society, and how those kinds of tactics were on a collision course with the people we were becoming.
Grasping these truths both altered the course of my life and, years later, would form the premise of This Land Is Your Land – my attempt to make sense of what was happening to us – how our unprecedented diversification is both what’s forced us to reckon with what it really means to be a true democracy, and is the driver behind the increasingly desperate attempts by a faction to reassert their reign.
That’s because right now, we’re witnessing nothing less than the outright obliteration of every power majority ever created – from chattel slavery and wage slavery to denials of citizenship and the restricting of the vote to property owners, to segregation and discrimination, racial supremacy, gender supremacy, straight supremacy, wealth supremacy and religious supremacy.
Each and every one of them is shrinking and disappearing. This means that any subset reliant on them to stay in power simply can’t remain in power. Not as long as we aspire to be a society where authority is shared both universally and equally – a democracy.
250 years ago, the whole of the human race took a previously unimaginable socio-evolutionary leap forward, when the ideas underpinning democracy spread around the world, upending tiered social systems that had existed throughout human history almost instantly. All of a sudden, humankind was dreaming of what could be, instead of settling for what had always been.
It reminds me of that RFK quote: There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? We started dreaming of a new kind of society, one conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal, of a land free of social hierarchy, religious tyranny and imperial ideology. Where everyone has enough, where justice is just and freedom is real.
But democracy was still just a theoretical. No one had ever seen it in practice. It was like the mountaintop Martin spoke of during his final sermon. On the other side is the Promised Land, but there was a long hard climb from here to there. Turning the idea of democracy into something real would take two-plus centuries. It’s the work we’ve been about since the end of the Revolutionary War; working out what a “for all” society even means, and how we go about building one.
Yet, right from the beginning, there was another segment of us that was content to not contest the ideals democracy extolled – as long as there was means to game it – to allow the “truly deserving” to rule. So, they built in protocols that shifted power in their favor, starting with the three-fifths compromise they strong-armed into the Constitution itself. This one point – whether the United States would become a society for just some, or for all – is essentially what all the struggle that has occurred since has been about.
Contrary to how our origin story is often told, it wasn’t just the anti-slavery folk who compromised; the pro-slavery faction did as well. Because they had to accept democracy as our nation’s organizing framework and operating system. They deemed getting their slaves included in the Electoral College to be far more important than resisting the democratic process.
Why? Perhaps because the idea itself didn’t feel real; it felt more like laudatory language you put in a document like a Declaration of Independence, something they never thought we’d actually aspire to. Or, maybe they’d been planning to use their outsized political power to sway the nation in the direction they wanted things to go. Which, they did with legislation expanding, rather than ending slavery.
Or, maybe it was already in the backs of their minds that, if worst came to worst, they’d simply secede. Like they did four-score-and-five years later. Either way, the battle lines of the centuries-long struggle over the kind of nation we’d grow up to be had, right from the beginning, been drawn in blood.
That’s why losing the Civil War and the abolition of slavery didn’t touch supremacy ideology. Its proponents had long realized they could reign, even within our democratic structure, simply by constructing a consolidated majority. Doing so allowed them to use the vote itself to rule society, all while calling what we have, a democracy.
Which is why where we are today – this accelerating proliferation of diversity – is an unprecedented problem. Though we’ve encountered similar forks in the road, including in Selma, with marchers intent on advancing and segregationists vowing to stop them, this moment is also unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
Around the world, humankind’s diversification is like a battering ram, shattering every segregating construct ever constructed. And in a society that’s both designed to award equal measures of ruling power to everyone (that’s democracy) and where every faction that once ruled via majority power is becoming just another minority (that’s diversity), no segment of that totality can reign. And the more we change, the less power those who believe themselves to be society’s rightful rulers (that’s supremacy) have.
So, if these factions are to maintain their rule, it means doing at least one of two things – winnowing down the relative size of society’s new majority, or decommissioning the system that’s diluting, and thereby diminishing their power, then distributing it to the collective. What we’re witnessing is supremacy’s last stand; an ideology whose survival hinges on either the shackling of diversity or the ending of democracy. The whole thing reminds me of that saying, “Good, fast cheap – pick any two.” Only, in our case, it’s diversity, democracy, supremacy – pick any two.
For instance, history shows that supremacy can survive beneath the banner of democracy, but only if diversity is suppressed and people “know their place”. Like we did when we came up with the idea of coalescing over 70 European people groups, many of whom were avowed enemies, under the singular banner of the “white race”. (Or, like Nazi Germany did. Only theirs was called the “Aryan race”.)
Likewise, diversity and supremacy can coexist if those seeking to rule can somehow restrict democracy. Like they did in South Africa, where a ruling minority of 20% of the nation maintained absolute power over every facet of society simply by politically disempowering the remaining 80%.
Parenthetically, how did South Africans come up with the massive apartheid system they put in place? Unbelievably, they learned it from us. They sent emissaries to study the Jim Crow South, then took the system of segregation they saw there, back, and implemented it. According to Afrikaner historian Hermann Giliomee, when the South Africans saw Alabama’s segregated buses and colleges, “they thought to themselves, Eureka!”
Which gets us to the third pairing, that of diversity and democracy, and how any nation that truly commits to them, that refuses to resist one or bind the other, is effectively inoculated against supremacy. They build up an immunity to it, which enables them to jettison it altogether. Exactly what we’re on the cusp of doing. It’s why our unprecedented diversification, both in scope and scale, changes everything.
Today, American diversity is a given. Which, in our current governance system, one structured to award an equal measure of ruling power to every single member of society, means that no portion of “some of us” gets to rule. Our only way forward is by becoming a place where everyone does. That’s exactly what dēmokratia, a combination of demos (“the people”) and kratos (“rule”), from which we get the word democracy – “rule of the people” means.
But this same faction that’s utilized supremacy to maintain rulership for two centuries hasn’t just given up the ghost. They’ve persisted, despite having every one of their power constructs reduced to minority status (non-Anglo births have, for 13 years, increasingly outstripped Anglo births, non-churchgoers have, for 8 years, grown increasingly larger than churchgoers, etc.).
Visible evidence of our inevitable transition into a non-majority nation would turn out to be supremacists’ final wake-up call, teaching them an important lesson; that, as long as we were structured as a democracy, their days at the top of the pyramid were numbered. And that’s the ironic thing about this moment in history. Because, right now, this dwindling non-majority that’s smaller than it’s ever been, holds the reins in all three branches of government, not to mention the military and our nuclear arsenal.
But this didn’t happen overnight. It took them 60 years of hard work, from the plans enacted after Selma, and LBJ’s signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which universalized political power, until today, to get to this moment. It involved everything from segregationists’ defection from their long-time home in the DNC to take over the GOP to concerted efforts to turn the faithful off racial justice, from deal-making with presidents to appoint Supreme Court justices aligned with their ideology to using Paul Weyrich’s strategy of targeting mid-term elections to take over Congress.
It’s why Southern Baptist televangelist Pat Robertson’s assertion that a “well-organized minority” could “influence the selection of candidates to an astonishing degree”, hit home. Because the former majority was already recognizing that it was soon to be a minority. And it’s why Weyrich’s declaration in front of 15,000 pastors that he didn’t want everyone to vote, (and his inference that those pastors, if they were on God’s side, shouldn’t want everyone to vote either) was so important. Because they now had a strategy.
Today, they get that this is a now-or-never moment, that their sharply declining numbers mean that, numerically, they’ll be below the water line by the next presidential election. This means that unless something radical changes, this is it, this is supremacy’s last stand. That is, unless this faction finds a way to turn itself into a functional majority again, or creates the means of cutting certain people out of governance “by the people, of the people and for the people”, of thwarting democracy.
This has been the endgame since the moment the Alabama State Troopers were forced to stand down, and allow the marchers to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They get that this is this their faction’s last chance. They have no intention of wasting it. Diversity, democracy, supremacy – pick any two.
This great sociological shift means that one way or another, this is the last battle. Come 2028, we’ll either have evolved into a diverse democracy, a society for all of us, or we’ll have gone backwards in the time machine some 200 years, devolving into some form of empire or aristocracy; something far less than we were, and the antithesis of the dreams that birthed us. It’s why this is the moment of decision for us as a nation, America’s fork in the road.
Because sheer numbers mean that, in a functional democracy, believers in a “for some” society can never win again. Again, they get this. They said it often enough on the 2024 campaign trail. But, they also know that if they can just hold the line for four more years, if they can keep enough of this massive majority on the sidelines every day between now and the 2028 election – they can effectively render democracy impotent. But, the opposite is also true: If we break the supremacy faction’s hold on society this one last time, it will be the last time.
The Brennan Center’s Michael Waldman, in his latest briefing on Selma and the vote, put it this way:
Today’s fight to vote does not involve police batons or snarling dogs. Rather, it is embodied in laws and legislation, court rulings, firings of election security officials, and attacks on voting advocates.
It unfolds in courtrooms, of course: Those working to suppress the vote are currently trying to convince federal courts that citizens are not allowed to seek redress under the Voting Rights Act when their freedom to vote is violated. One federal appeals court has already embraced that radical view.
We see it in firings: The new administration dismissed the entire set of officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who worked on protecting elections from attack, clearing a path for malevolent foreign or domestic actors to try to manipulate the voting system.
It even happens in job interviews. Candidates for top administration positions are asked whether they believe in the Big Lie that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election — the conspiracy theory used to justify voting restrictions.
The pace seems to be accelerating. This week, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at a law firm, Perkins Coie. The order revokes the security clearance of its employees, bars them from federal buildings, and threatens investigations of companies that hire the firm. Among other justifications, the order cites Perkins Coie’s litigation to stop voter suppression.
It’s hard to think of a clearer application of inappropriate government power, plainly aiming to chill free speech and scare the legal community to force it to back off from defending the rule of law.
Today’s voter restrictions can come on the floor of Congress too. The House will soon vote on the SAVE Act, which would essentially require citizens to produce a passport or birth certificate to be able to register (or re-register) to vote. At least 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents. The measure would essentially eliminate registration online, by mail, or through registration drives. It would be the worst voting bill ever enacted by Congress.
Congress can provide a positive answer instead. Rep. Terry Sewell (D-AL) last week introduced an updated version of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This legislation would restore the full strength of that law after it was gutted by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder. It would apply current data to protect voting rights all over the country. That’s the right way for Congress to address voting: with facts, not fear.
Today’s fight to vote does not yet call on us to show the physical bravery displayed by the heroes on the Edmund Pettus Bridge 60 years ago. The barriers they faced were much more severe than those of today. But it summons each of us to action nevertheless.
At the end of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke before the Alabama State House. In a less-remembered part of that remarkable oration, King explained that the Jim Crow system was rooted not merely in racism but in raw political and economic calculus of the robber baron–dominated 1890s.
“The threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishing of a segregated society,” King said. “They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; they segregated southern churches from Christianity; they segregated southern minds from honest thinking, and they segregated the Negro from everything.”
The fight to vote, King understood, went well beyond the technical matter of the franchise to the wider question of what kind of government we had and what kind of society we would live in. How long would progress take, he asked. “Not long, because no lie can live forever.”
We get what’s coming; that, after 200+ years of efforts to prevent us from becoming a “for all” America, in just 20 years, in 2045, it’s all over. The last of the majorities falls, giving us the chance to craft an enduring future where all are truly equal, the one we were always supposed to have.
But, we’ll only get there by making our stand, like so many who’ve come before us have, from those who first envisioned democracy to the Selma marchers who put everything on the line so that one day, our singing of We Shall Overcome would be so much more than a hope held high. And it can be. All we need do is remember the three truths that, together, are the antidote to supremacy:
Truth One: The ballot is the single most powerful social mechanism in existence.
Truth Two: For the first time in history, those of us committed to a society that works for all of us vastly outnumber those content with one that only works for some of us.
Truth Three: The only way we lose is by not showing up.
While the future we’re choosing starts with voter enfranchisement, it extends so far beyond it. Because the vote is to democracy what the welcome mat is to the house. It’s not just who casts the ballot but who’s on it, not just who makes the rules but who those rule-makers are accountable to. Or, like Hozier and Mavis taught us, it’s not just the waking but the rising. It’s about just justice and fundamental equality. About everyone having enough, being embraced for who they are and being able to write their own line in our grand story.
That’s what we were dreaming of all those years ago when we caught a glimpse of this new thing called “democracy”.
In 2028, it will have been 30 years since those days when I made those three key realizations mentioned at the top of this letter. I remember thinking back then that we had plenty of time to get this right, to become the people Martin described in his dream. I was mistaken.
“We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today,” Martin said in his Vietnam speech. “Procrastination is still the thief of time. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words ‘Too Late’.” He was right. There really is such a thing as “too late”. But we haven’t passed that threshold yet. The future remains ours to write.
Granted, versions of this battle have been fought before. But this time is also different. Because if we, this diverse constituency can come together like those thousands of Americans who stood with the Selma marchers, if we can stay in the struggle no matter what they throw at us, if we can recognize that nothing less than our future as a democracy is at stake, we’ll not just win. We’ll prove this to be supremacy’s last stand.
This is Day 58 under this administration. We have just 599 days until the 2026 elections, 1,330 days until the 2028 elections, and 1,398 days until Martin’s 100th birthday. So, when do we fight? Today, tomorrow, and every day between now and then. Where do we fight? Anywhere and everywhere we see injustice occurring or oppression increasing. And, how do we fight? In every way we can.
My closing song for you today is Watershed by my all-time favorite musical duo, Emily Sailers and Amy Ray, the Indigo Girls. Emily wrote it about her personal journey, but it feels like it’s about our collective one, from that fork in the road our nation faced 60 years ago when Hosea Williams and John Lewis stood proud against their oppressors to the one we’re facing today.