Okay, there is no such word as “pejoraty.” But there should be. I would define it as the state of becoming or being made worse and derive it from the Latin perjorare, “to make or become worse.” “Pejoraty,” then, would accurately describe the current state of America’s majority.

Most of you know that our President won his election with nearly 3 million less votes than his Democratic rival. The Constitution allows that anomaly by disregarding the overall vote count of citizens in favor of State-won electors. You may also be aware that Republicans gained control of the Senate while winning 15 million less votes than their Democratic rivals. The Constitution, of course, mandates equal State representation, which translates to two Senators for each State. But did you know that from 2010-2018, Republicans also won control of the House without winning the popular vote? How do you explain the “people’s” house being controlled by a minority Party? Well, for that answer, you can review how Republican-controlled State legislators have defined Congressional Districts, created voting laws, and maintained voting records. You have certainly heard of gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, and purges of voter records. Now you can understand how it is that Republicans can ignore the will of the majority—as witnessed in all the polls—and focus so fiercely on holding onto power. Given this “sleight of hand,” how do Republicans use their power? Well, instead of allocating funds needed to mitigate the effects of a pandemic, they dither away their legislative time while worrying about the economy. American lives be damned. Instead of financing support for mail-in ballots during a pandemic, their inaction allows the President’s new Postmaster General to cripple the United States Postal Service. Our democratic right to vote be damned.

The Senate will not pass, and the President will not sign legislation that would help States’ pandemic mitigation efforts and relieve the stress on Americans quarantined at home, out of work, and denied classroom education for their children. That same legislation, passed by the House 3 months ago, would also address the expected tsunami of mail-in ballots. But the President takes “no responsibility at all” for addressing the pandemic—promising it will just “disappear.” And he declares mail-in voting leads to massive fraud and a “rigged” election—claiming so without any evidence or historical reference. Of course, the pandemic is real and massive voter fraud is not. But the President would rather create a false reality that serves his own interests. For example, he understands the connection between mail-in voting and the pandemic. Fear of Covid-19 may discourage voting at the polls and encourage mail-in voting. So, the President must shut down mail-in voting if he believes a majority of Americans favor his opponent, as the polls consistently indicate. His path to victory would then rests upon his ability to fire up his occult-like followers to turn out at the polls. His political path forward is clear. He must lead as many rallies as he can to muster his base. And he must suppress that growing majority of voters who support his opponent. Thereby, he uses fear of the pandemic to keep people home and dependent upon a postal service he attempts to debilitate. Of course, he can rely upon the complicity of a Republican controlled Senate to table legislation that would undo this scheme to win an election he appears to be losing.

Given this nefarious scheme, it was no surprise when the President fired the Postmaster General and replaced him with a former member of the Republican Finance Committee—and one of his million-dollar campaign donors. The complicit Senate remained silent while the House subpoenaed the President’s appointee, questioning his credentials and suspicious actions that have already degraded mail delivery across all of America. In self-incriminating fashion, he refused to provide documents or even admit direct responsibility for cancelling overtime, disconnecting/destroying 671 electronic sorters, and removing thousands of mailboxes. He alleged these actions were taken by others, though he justified them as part of a policy to restore the Post Office to fiscal solvency. The irony here is the Senate’s refusal to pass the beforementioned House legislation that addressed the Post Office’s financial and operational issues. The President and his complicit Republican Senators are deliberately discounting the life and death impact of Covid-19 and of a debilitated postal service on American citizens and their democracy, respectively. In other words, the Republican Party is sabotaging the general welfare and voting rights of the American people to steal an election.

You might not have realized that since 1992, Republican Presidential candidates have only once won the popular vote—that was in 2004. And yet they have served three terms as President since the turn of the century. In fact, Republicans have dominated this century but, for the most part, without a popular mandate. They became the “Party of no” during the Obama Administration. And, more recently, they have become “the uncompromising” Party under a Senate Majority Leader who calls himself the “grim reaper.” Bipartisanship dies with the House bills buried in the Leader’s desk. Is this a healthy phenomenon for a democratic republic whose very existence depends upon resolving political differences under the guidance of common principles? In fact, the word “compromise” seems absent from the Republican legislative lexicon. It was John C. Calhoun, part of the “Great Triumvirate,” who first laid down the non-compromising gauntlet over the admission of slave states. Eleven years after his death, America realized the consequence of his non-compromising position, specifically, the Civil War.

Political dissent by public factions can be healthy. But political intransigence in the Congress can be subversive. Deliberate suppression or manipulation of the vote in a democracy is subversive and pejorative. When a President abuses the power of his office to tilt the electoral system in his favor, there is no other way to describe his action other than traitorous and pejorative. And those who support his action are complicit. The victim in these subversive and traitorous actions are the American people. And when a majority of American voters suffer the consequences of these actions, they have experienced what I have coined as “pejoraty.”

Now victimhood, however pejorative, needs to be defined. To clarify, let us take a quiz. Who suffers when the President minimizes the need to mitigate a pandemic? Who suffers when legislation designed to both mitigate and address the human impact of a pandemic is tabled in the Senate? Who suffers when the United States Postal Service is deliberately deconstructed by the President’s Administration? Who suffers when the instruments of a free election are attacked by a sitting President? Who suffers when the institutions of government, like the EPA, HHS, HUD, USDA, CDC, DOJ, DHS, the Departments of Education, Interior, and Agriculture, or even the White House itself can no longer be trusted to do the people’s work? Who suffers when America’s domestic and national security interests are subordinated to a President’s personal political benefit? Who suffers when a President is proven guilty of abusing the public trust and the powers of his office by soliciting foreign interference in a Presidential election, by engaging in the extortion/bribery of a foreign president, and by obstructing justice in the investigations of his conduct? Who suffers when the Federal Government tilts the scales of the economy in favor of the wealthy and corporate America to the detriment of essential workers, the poor, and the middle class? Who suffers when a government promotes medical care as a for-profit enterprise rather than a public service? Who suffers when a President denies that the increasing pressure of environmental disasters makes undeniably evident the unmitigated impact of climate change?

The answer to these questions should be obvious: a majority—if not all—of Americans. Admittedly, some of these questions challenge strongly held partisan positions. But who would contend they do not affect—at minimum—a majority of Americans? Therefore, most of us are in “pejoraty.”

If we focus on the “becoming” part of this pejorative experience, we can identify key agents of our worsening. First, as stated above, our current President, his appointed acolytes, and complicit Republican office holders have used the power of their offices to manipulate the vote, thereby weakening citizen sovereignty. And their obstructive actions are abetting a decades-long trend of distrust in government and, therefore, in the efficacy of our democracy. Second, like the unrest in the 60’s and 70’s, we have grown disillusioned by the pain and deaths caused by unprovoked foreign wars, by persistent racism, and by a President obsessed with the belief he is above the law. Regarding this last reference, President Trump has carried lawlessness far beyond anything Nixon would ever have conceived.

But, somehow, we have overlooked the key culprit in our disillusionment, specifically, the trust we seem to have lost in ourselves. Are we still believers in inalienable rights and their extension to all Americans regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or place of origin? And can we still answer Lincoln’s call for a rebirth of that government of, by, and for the people? In an ever-changing world, that rebirth is a continuous process. Yet nearly half the eligible voters do not vote. Conspiracy theorists spewhate and dissent on social media and often hijack broadcast news with their vitriol. Do we question their apocrypha and seek the truth? Moreover, after blaming the government and absolving ourselves of any responsibility, many of us have turned to a “strong man” to deliver us both from the failings of our government and from our self-perceived powerlessness/hopelessness. But there are at least two misconceptions about alleged strong men and their self-declared authority (“only I can,” “a stable genius,” “the greatest President in history”). First, they exaggerate their prowess and silence any evidence to the contrary by discrediting or punishing their dissenters. The 20th century bore witness to the death and chaos such men unleashed on the world. Second, they are incapable of serving ideals greater than their own self-interest and therefore of serving the needs or promoting the prospects of others. In fact, they are shallow and weak, very unlike the men and women who founded our nation and fought to preserve it. Remember that the signers of the Declaration of Independence would have been hung, drawn, and quartered if the colonies had lost the war of independence. They were men of character, conviction, and courage. And they had trust in their convictions and in themselves. They should still be our models today.

In the 1980’s we were told that “government is the problem.” President Reagan, a former governor, used these words to justify reducing the size of the Federal bureaucracy and assisting State self-governance. In fact, the States currently manage many programs funded wholly or in part by the Federal government. But I doubt President Reagan would consider it a State right to impede or subvert a free election. Free elections are mandated in our Constitution and are an essential cornerstone of any democracy. He was a firm constitutionalist—much like Barack Obama—and referenced the founding fathers extensively in his speeches. And he certainly would not have aligned with the Newt Gingrich Congress of the 1990’s that maligned the very bipartisanship that Reagan so carefully nurtured. President Reagan had trust in our system of government. From his first inaugural to his last speech to the nation, he adhered to one principal, what he called “a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.” ¹ He had trust in America and its people. His optimism for our country was captured in his metaphor of the shining city on a hill.

But that shining city is less visible today. Are we not “becoming” or “being made” worse? The answer depends upon perspective. For example, yesterday I woke up in a very dark world, reminiscent of the Greg Bear sci-fi novels I read as a pre-teen. But the dark red dawn that greeted me was not Mars. It was the same earth wherein I have lived since birth, but in an alternate universe. Like the southeast hurricanes, our Pacific Coast fire season starts earlier, is more intense, and lasts longer every passing year. And these changes are only the most visible part of a new terrestrial environment. Our “now” has already been made worse and will become more so unless the majority of people on this planet decide to mitigate the effects of climate change and begin now to adapt to what can no longer be avoided.

Our species has survived the Ice Age and many cataclysms, some man-made. But we do not survive as individuals in mass extinction events. The same can be said of survival in the fall of civilizations. Everybody suffers and falls victim unless everybody works to preserve our humanity and way of life. America at this junction in history is experiencing two disasters. The first is global, like climate change and a pandemic that have already endangered lives while promising worse to come. The second is political and threatens the end of our democratic experiment—the loss of America’s identity as a democratic republic governed by law and a constitution. In place of a more perfect union, we have a criminal and perverse Administration that promotes fear, chaos, violence, and divisiveness. But America does not have to become the vile state of Trump. We still have the prerogative to vote for a new administration and restore our democracy before we lose it altogether. Only then can we develop national plans to address Covid-19 and the impact of climate change.

We need to regain the spirit of America, that same idealism that inspired our Constitutional founders and energized Americans to extend the fruits of that idealism to all. Presidents Reagan and Obama, our most popular Republican and Democratic Presidents over the last 40 years, both called us all to support the ideals and principles of our founding and hold them up to the world. These are times that demand us to pull together in recognition of our American heritage and common humanity. The problems we face are unique, but so were the problems faced by our forefathers. America has overcome the existential threats of a Civil War and two World Wars. And our current economic crisis is no more challenging than its predecessors which our parents and grandparents overcame. We must restore our trust in ourselves and in America. If we do so, we can turn this page of history. And we will overcome a pandemic, disavow climate deniers, and restore our economy. But, first, we must reject a demagogic despot.

As a famous Roman Senator once said, “I will think you a man . . . (but) I will not think you human.” ² Let us restore our common humanity and avoid the state I coined as “pejoraty.” What kind of species are we if not human?

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¹ Ronald Reagan, January 11, 1989, Farewell Address
² This is my rather literal translation of Cicero’s comments about human nature: “virum te putabo . . . hominem non putabo.” In context, he was distinguishing human decency from grossness. But his words also imply that human nature encompasses gender, rather than be defined by it (a point I made in a previous blog).