By Robert Kimball Shinkoskey
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
America has a “left/right/center” problem.
People on the left, people on the right, and independent folks in the political center have no earthly understanding of when or how the country steps into the deep, dark doodoo of kingship.
Monarchy has been on the political menu for thousands of years, but twenty-first century Americans know little about it.
Those on the “conservative” far right have been talked into believing those on the bleeding-heart left are pushing the country toward socialism or communism. Those on the “liberal” left have been talked into believing that those on the evangelical right are pushing the country toward fascism. In fact, both parties are stuck in out-of-control propaganda narratives that regularly hide their own constitutional deficiencies and put a glaring light on the admittedly deficient other party instead.
Democrats were the first to subvert the great constitutional imperative for term limits on the President (Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt). They were also the first to usurp the extremely important Congressional “war power” (Pres. Harry Truman).
A Republican president was the first to entirely usurp the law-making and taxing and spending powers of Congress and the mandate for judicial independence. (Pres. Donald J. Trump).
The citizenry of the United States, for their part, have given up their responsibility to be the guardians of the Constitution. Since World War II the American people have been on an absolute bender to ignore civics education, avoid regulation of corporate and government behavior, and reject citizenship responsibilities so they can instead devote themselves to entertainment, government doles, blue-collar and white-collar criminal behavior, addiction, and recriminations against anyone and everyone except the ones they see in the mirror each morning.
The Founders knew a great deal about monarchy and used the Declaration of Independence to teach future generations about it. They wrote the U.S. Constitution to fight against it. When we don’t read those documents regularly and keep the Constitution top of mind, monarchy inevitably stalks democracy and slays it like a jungle lion its prey. American churchgoers, for their part, studiously ignore the Bible’s dramatic story about the point in time ancient Israel gave up on decentralized government and asked a powerful military king to run everything for them forevermore.
Large steps in the direction of one-man-rule have been happening for over a hundred years in America, but commentators have not thought to even mention the word “monarchy” or the history of monarchy until the past year and a half. Today they dote on cartoon-like superficial aspects of tyrannical monarchy like the purple robe and the golden crown and scepter of medieval times.
America made huge lurches away from rule of law beginning during World War I and the era of the Roaring Twenties soon after. Those lurches continued on with World War II and the anti-law Age of Aquarius movement soon after. Those periods of stumbling were followed by the long Gen X and Millennial Age of educational and criminal justice backsliding beginning in 1965 and roaring on through 1996, until we finally arrived at the “Golden Age” of Absolute Monarchy in the Donald J. Trump era.
The last time America made a national reversal of a tidal wave of monarchic sentiment was the bipartisan Progressive Era (early 1900s) that successfully stemmed the depredations of the Robber Barrons of the Gilded Age (late 1800s).
However, the second great wave of golden calf-style royalist government cranked into existence with the Ronald Reagan era of the 1980s and the Bill Clinton era of the1990s. Both presidents championed an unchecked economic de-regulation movement that has powered onward down to today so that we essentially have divided the entire nation into the luxury-minded 1% “haves,” the aristocracy, and the affordability-starved “have nots,” the rest of the 99% of our once empowered people.
The “No Kings” movement of the past year in America only vaguely understands how we got here, where we are at, and how to get out of this predicament. Politicians, corporations, media, and the citizenry at large have sold their souls to a devil who today is not prowling around up in the clouds somewhere or writhing around on the ground like a snake but sits ensconced in dictatorial power on an Oval Office throne.
Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books and editorials about democracy, religion, and the American presidency.
