The Dangers Of Unrepresentation

THE DANGERS OF UNREPRESENTATION


In days of yore, the downtrodden mostly accepted their lowly status and simply toiled from cradle to grave without much more than a low, murmured grumbling. From time to time, however, their complacency crumbled and their long-suffered grievances erupted into revolutionary violence. The French elite, the Russian aristocracy and other ruling classes were made to pay with their lives to assuage, temporarily, the anguish of unfulfilled lives.


In modern times, even as the oppression by the wealthiest continued, albeit in commercial rather than regal guise, new outlets for diverting pent up lower-class anger were developed. Thus, the troubled birth of unions gave working people a degree of bargaining power never before possessed. The extension of voting rights to the non-propertied gave at least the semblance of representation to the hitherto powerless. As a consequence, the uprisings and bloodlettings of an earlier time faded, replaced by a less violent form of class warfare.


Regrettably, that positive development is now being reversed. Somehow, the rich have persuaded the poor that their interests are closely aligned and that both are benefitted by dismantling the leavening effects of government intervention and the bargaining power of unions. The process of reducing working class empowerment is furthered by the acceleration of racial bias and ethnic division aimed at splintering solidarity and setting worker against worker. Voting restrictions that target minority blocs are intended to, and have had the effect of, disenfranchising those likely to favor progressive reform.


Wealth continues to stream to the wealthiest and the differences in income and lifestyle between the haves and the have much less have grown to vast disproportion. But now, the means to seek redress and relief, to vent frustration and to obtain meaningful representation are being stifled. When government is no longer representative and unions are weakened or nonexistent, we will return to a time when rebellion is fostered and relief is sought by resort to force.




January 2, 2015