Declaration Cancelled, King Returns

In accepting a National Book Foundation medal in 2014, eminent writer Ursula K Le Guin gave a short speech that has come to be both prophetic and defining.  It was published later (in her last collection of essays, Words Are My Business) under the title of "Freedom."  I applied its main points to events in 2021 in this post, also called "Freedom," which I still stand behind.  But there was one line of the speech that came back to me this past week.

"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable," she said, and paused.  "But then, so did the divine right of kings."  

You could hear the audience catch its breath, anticipating her next sentence, "Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."  And indeed, the divine right of kings to rule absolutely was opposed at various times and places over centuries--including very successfully here in the United States, beginning with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It finally died in Europe in the ashes of World War I.  Though it lived on in other forms, and arguably still does in some parts of the world, it became so obsolete that even the concept is mostly unfamiliar.

And so, in 2014, the audience knew it was antique, and as a reality, unthinkable.  Maybe capitalism that is killing the Earth we know could also be made so obsolete.

But forget capitalism.  It turns out that the divine right of kings is back.

 After the Supreme Court decision announced on July 1, the divine right of the king has been retroactively enshrined in the United States.  It is a repudiation of the very Declaration celebrated today.

It is true that the Declaration itself doesn't address it directly, and there were those who wanted to crown George Washington as king after the American Revolution, but all the values supported by the words of the Declaration are against it.  

A corrupt Supreme Court has institutionalized corruption in the presidency.  Equal under the law now means some people are more equal than others according to the law, namely the Supreme Court justices and a President they like (for they did retain some power to decide against Presidents they don't like.)   

When scholars describe where the theory supporting this decision came from, I'm fairly sure it will involve institutions of the far right, and specifically those supporting (and supported by) Christian nationalism, which I posted about recently.  It's a different wrinkle on the concept maybe, but describing this as the divine right of kings has that dimension.  

So this Independence Day we also have the candidate currently leading in the polls who will embrace those rights, and that concept.  The monarch ordering "off with their heads!" may soon not be so funny. Among other things, malice and hatred have been empowered.  We know who is just waiting for that power.

Meanwhile, the most overpowering fact of this Independence Day is the overpowering climate--the intense heat, fires, storms, flooding--that are causing celebrations to be cancelled, or just otherwise dangerous.  Yet here in the United States of Denial, we talk about everything but, most markedly in our politics and policy.