A Nation of Laws, a Threat to Democracy
Danaka Katovich
This was originally published to Danaka’s personal blog, Proof That I’m Alive.
I felt it useless to share my thoughts on the outcome of the election that took place earlier this month and add to the ever growing thought puddle about why it happened the way it did. People will talk about it for decades. Many will make the wrong conclusions while the answer seems to stare us in the face on most days that Congress is in session. There is a series of horrible divides in this country, and the biggest seems to be what the the masses want and what the ruling class is willing to do. These things are at odds with one another, and that was demonstrated yesterday when the Senate voted overwhelmingly against a measure that would block arms shipments to Israel, in a political reality where a majority of Americans want an arms embargo.
There are two important facts that decided entirely how the vote played out yesterday. Neither of them have anything to do with what the American people want, what is good for national security, or even the personal convictions of some of these senators. The first is that many senators accept campaign contributions from the pro-Israel lobby, and the pro-Israel lobby also spends millions visiting their offices to tell them how they should vote. The second fact is that the weapons industry behaves the exact same way. The pro-Israel lobby and the weapons industry are obvious allies in situations like yesterday, where billions of dollars of weapons sales to Israel are on the line. Individually these lobbying forces pose a horrible threat to democracy, together they become a political juggernaut. It’s safe to say that these special interests groups have one million times more access to our elected officials than a working-class person ever will.
It’s hard to say the exact breakdown for why most people in the U.S. support an arms embargo. After meeting a woman during the RNC with a pink Women for Trump hat on with a Free Palestine pin secured to the front of it, I stopped insisting that every American’s opinions ought to make sense to me immediately. Her bosses are Palestinian, and they are very nice people. So be it, I guess. It’s safe to say that many Americans have seen dead children on their phone screens every day for over a year, and perhaps they think children and families should stop being killed.
When I see a headline that an American made weapon was used to carry out a massacre, I do think to myself that I wish we hadn’t given the human butcher the knife. I do think that maybe, none of this could have happened if we didn’t give him the knife. A lot of Americans are coming to that conclusion, and they are completely right. So we are all thinking the same thing, and then the person in charge decides to give the butcher fighter jets because friends of the butcher and friends of the guy that makes the fighter jets paid him off to make that decision. Screw what the rest of us think! And our government acts like this, not just about Israel, but every single issue that would make our lives less miserable.
Here’s what was made clear yesterday by the JRD vote in the Senate:
Senators are allowed to take millions of dollars from a lobbyist group that specifically lobbies for the interests of a foreign government.
Senators are allowed to take millions of dollars from the industry that directly profits from the weapons sales they vote on.
They are allowed to act on that influence by voting against the interests and wishes of the American people to the benefit of that foreign country and industry.
They are allowed to call people terrorists for expressing the popular demands of the American people (see Tom Cotton’s interaction with CODEPINK).
They are allowed to break U.S. and international law in order to comply with that lobbyist group.
Nice, we are a nation of laws that only the most powerful people in the country can break if they feel like it on a Wednesday afternoon. I suppose it’s always been this way.
Democrats in Congress are raising concerns about Trump being a threat to American democracy. They do a lot to remind us that he’s a criminal. Yesterday, those Democrats voted against the will of the American people and voted in favor of breaking U.S. and international law. If they were concerned about democracy or the rule of law, they sure aren’t acting like it. And when history decides to hold the world accountable for the destruction of Gaza, they will be cellmates in the Hague with the republicans they claim to hate so much.
Danaka Katovich is CODEPINK's national co-director. Danaka graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor's degree in Political Science in November 2020.
Read more from Danaka at Proof That I’m Alive.