All the heated rhetoric about supposed threats to democracy is just a political and news media side show meant to divert public attention from real structural threats to our nation. The major threat to democracy — to our republic — is potential non-payment of interest on the national debt.
According to the U.S. Treasury, that item is the second largest federal expenditure after Social Security. And in about 10 years the day of reckoning for Social Security is projected to come to pass.
Non- or reduced payments of Social Security benefits is a threat only to politicians of one party or the other. But non-payment of interest on the national debt is an existential threat to our entire nation.
If the federal government cannot borrow money when tax revenues are insufficient to pay the bills, our whole way of life is imperiled. You think the 1930s Great Depression was a national horror show? Just wait until the U.S. Treasury tells bond holders in China or on Main Street there will be no interest payment.
Compounding this disaster, what do you think will happen when the old folks (and covered younger folks) don’t get their Social Security or Medicare bennies? Maybe they won’t burn the joint down, but they surely will vote every incumbent into the unemployment welfare lines.
And, if Social Security and Medicare can’t pay the bills, what do you think will happen to Medicaid, food stamps and all the other social welfare programs that, more than any founding ideology, hold our “democracy” together?
President Joe Biden’s bungling and Donald Trump’s truculence are a kindergarten puppet show compared to what will happen if Treasury defaults on promised payments. The hyped-up “threats to democracy” are mere ripples in the ocean for the safety of our ship of state.
Paul M. Craig
Northampton