Like a sleeping giant whose body is hidden just beneath dark waves, the base nature of mankind has been stirring the world over. One of the giant’s hands has come out of the midnight sea to grip the earth to leverage it better to stand. That hand crushes the nation of Ukraine under the hum of soulless drones committing soulless murder. Of the giant’s other hand, it brushed through Gaza on its rise from the depths, tearing Palestinians asunder, only to plant itself deeply into the rocks and soil of the nation of Sudan, where hundreds of thousands are dying in brutal civil war, where men and boys face summary and unjust execution, and women and girls face brutal and directed assault.

Looming just beyond the edge of a dark horizon, the United States Executive Branch has positioned a tenth of its Navy in the Caribbean with all its compliments of manpower, cost, and weapons of destruction – against every single promise the President has made not to start any new conflicts, and to remove the country from foreign wars. A war to be held in a muddy and mountainous jungle of Venezuela, where yet once more old, greedy men send teenage boys to die as we near a time in which the Chinese prepare every single day to invade the peaceful country of Taiwan – something which the government of China vocalizes. 

But the basic nature of mankind has not fully breached the waves, not yet, not until the invasion – and maybe not even after, even in the face of the rancor of war between superpowers.

Before the birth of democracy in the West, the world was ruled by kings and despots and warlords since the beginning of time, and never before had there been any sort of exception but for brief and entirely accidental ‘good kings’, such as the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, who was hailed as a just ruler, only for after his death his terrible son, Commodus struck at Rome from her heart. To lean on the argument that one's own king or favored political leader is “just” or “holy” has been revealed through the free study of history in the West as unquenchable folly.

It is our ever-experiment of democracy, which for a time had won the world stage, but because of greed and envy and the thirst for a man to see his religion or ideals forced upon his neighbors, democracy is always watched by the losers – by dictators and kings and would-be princes-of-man. Mainly, though, it is watched by the basic nature of mankind.

In the writings of American hero Sam Houston (who was the President of the Republic of Texas, and brought it into the Union as a state), he wrote that American hero and French-man Marquis de Lafayette said about the United States when visiting the city of St. Louis in 1825,

“A Union, sir, so essential, not only to the fate of each member of the confederacy, but also the general fate of mankind, that the least breach of it would be hailed with barbarian joy, by a universal war-whoop of European aristocracy and despotism.”

 The smallest breach of democracy would be celebrated by tyrants and kings across the ocean, as orated by one of the men who helped to forge the United States. The death of democracy doesn't need to be whole. Just like taking a head injury which permanently damages the brain may make a person forever less than they were before, or in the way that losing a hand makes one less in a fight.

Earlier, wrote Lafayette on December 20th, 1823 to Thomas Jefferson,

“Every account I receive from the United States is a compensation for European disappointments and disgusts. There, our revolutionary hopes have been fulfilled, we may enjoy the happy thought that never a nation has been so completely free, so rapidly prosperous, so generally enlightened.”

That drowsy giant, submerged beneath the waves of the Earth, is not “war,” but the weaknesses of man; it is an age of dictators who watch as they poke and pull at the lameness which American democracy has become. Third presidential terms, jailing political opponents or not swearing them into office, or the combining of church and state. The waking of the colossus, and the true lamentation would not come with war, but with a weakened democracy – she needs not die to lose her throne upon the mantle of the world to the many wolves of despotism. Losing, however, would mean democracy’s death.

‘A Union, so essential to the fate of mankind that the smallest breach of it would be hailed with barbarian joy.’

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.