American democracy is dead. Code it and call it.
The US Supreme Court’s decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act again has cleared the runway for politicians who want to disenfranchise Black voters — and anyone who cares about effective democracy.
The act, a key piece of legislation from the Civil Rights era, ensured that where African Americans lived in the majority, constituency boundaries would reflect the concentrated power of their vote.
With Republicans now busy redrawing congressional maps, by 2028 or 2030, we could see a country where the party that controls the US House having been significantly outvoted in the popular vote. That is not democracy. And Black people will not be the only ones who lose.
Eight years ago, I wrote to a network of wealthy and powerful people I had moved among for two decades. “American capitalism is a particular mix of capitalism, kleptocracy and oligarchy,” I told them, “and becoming more of the latter two over time.”
