Is
American Democracy Dead?
September
19, 2024
Since at least
2016, news about American politics has contained things we older folks never
thought we’d ever hear. During his campaign for president in 2016, which Trump
won despite losing the popular vote, he said again and again that he could lose
only if the election were “rigged.” He said the same thing during his
reelection bid in 2020, which he lost. When he lost both the popular vote and
the electoral college vote in that election, he didn’t just claim that the
election had been rigged. He set out to do everything he could to overturn the
legitimate election result that put Trump out of office and put Biden in office.
He tried numerous lawsuits, all of which failed. He tried to threaten state
officials into falsifying their state’s election result. He concocted a scheme
to send fake electors and election
results to the federal government. He tried to get Vice President Pence unlawfully
to block Congress’ certification of the electoral college vote. Pence refused,
which may be the only decent thing he’s ever done in public life. When all of
his efforts to overturn the legitimate results of a free and fair election
failed, he incited a seditious mob and sent them to attack the United States
Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the election results.
Now Trump is
running for the presidency again. And once again he says that he can lose only
if the election is rigged. Not only that. He continues to claim that he
actually won the 2020 presidential election in a landslide and that his victory
was stolen from him. We all know that that claim is not only false, it is
downright absurd. It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous. Yet Trump
continues to make it. Millions of his minions continue to accept it as true
despite the fact that there is not one shred of evidence to support it. These
unthinking, gullible people will no doubt also fall for Trump’s inevitable
claim that, if he loses the 2024 election, it too was rigged and a victory was
once again stolen from him.
All of that
suggests that American democracy is at least seriously ill, but there is more. Republicans
across the country but especially in the so-called “swing states” are putting
in place election officials who may well come up with excuses not to certify a
Harris win in their states. At least Georgia has put in place laws to make it
easier for them to do that. For many of these MAGA zealots, the facts won’t
matter. All that will matter is that they can find an excuse to do to Harris
what Trump falsely claims has been done to him, namely, steal an election
victory.
But wait, there’s
more! MAGA zealots are attacking election officials and workers across the
country. They say those officials and workers, many of whom are simply
volunteers working to make our elections free and fair, are dishonest. They
harass those officials with threatening phone calls. They send them envelopes
containing some white powder that appears to be dangerous, though, thank God,
so far none of it has been. In some states, MAGA zealots have won election to
the office of Secretary of State, the official who oversees the electoral
process.
All of which
leads to one foundational question i.e., “What makes democracy work?” Democracy,
after all, doesn’t have much of a track record in human history. Its roots go
back at least to ancient Athens where some but not all citizens, all of them
men, were able to cast votes in public elections. But around the world and
across the millennia, democracies have been rare. They have also been rather
easily subverted by politicians who want to rule in a thoroughly non-democratic
way. Few democracies last for very long by historical standards. The United
States has been a democracy, of sorts at least, for over 250 years, but we are
a stark exception to the experience of the world in that respect. Democracy is
clearly a rare and delicate thing in human history.
So what makes
democracy work in the rare cases where it has in fact worked? The answer seems
to be that only the support of democracy, or at least the acceptance of
democracy, by the people of a nation with a democratic polity can make
democracy work. There are always people in every democracy who want to subvert
it, who want at least to distort it so that it works in their favor not in
favor of the country’s citizens as a whole. The United States has always had
such people. Up until Trump and the MAGA movement, those people have mostly
been the very wealthy and the very large corporations who benefit from public
policies that harm the rest of us.
Only the will of
the American people, or at least most of them, through free and fair elections,
has been able, at least at times, to keep the country’s anti-democratic forces
at bay. We did it in 1865, when we abolished slavery nationwide. We did it in
1932, when we elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt president and gave him a
Democratic congress. We have enacted weaker versions of our blocking special
interests each time that we have elected a Democrat as president at least since
FDR. We have also capitulated to the special interests. The best, or worst,
example of our doing so was when we elected Ronald Reagan as president then
reelected him despite his immensely harmful economic policies.[1]
Yet even when we
have voted against our own self interest, we have done it in a democratic
fashion. Though many of us were appalled by it, no one seriously asserted that
either the election or the reelection of Ronald Reagan was not democratic. The
same is true of the election and reelection of the war criminal George W. Bush.[2]
As horribly mistaken as both the election and reelection of Bush II was, it was
at least done democratically. No one claimed that a victory by his opponent was
stolen from him even though, in truth, the US Supreme Court did steal a
potential victory from Vice President Al Gore in 2000. Through all of the ups
and downs of American politics, the American people have, for the most part,
believed in and supported American democracy. That belief and that support are
the only reason our democracy, such as it is, has survived as long as it has.
Now Donald Trump
is eroding that belief and ending that support among millions of Americans. Like
totalitarian rulers always do, he tells a big lie, namely, that an election
victory was stolen from him; and he tells it over and over and over again. Hitler
did it. Stalin did it. Come up with a really big lie and tell it so often and
so confidently that gullible, uninformed people, that is, most people, will
believe it.[3] That’s
what Trump is doing. We can’t let him get away with it.
Trump and his
MAGA movement represent the greatest threat to American democracy at least
since the Civil War more than 150 years ago. There is a very real possibility
that the American people, through the grossly undemocratic electoral college
system, will put Trump back in power in this year’s presidential election. Trump
does not believe in democracy. He believes only in himself. He cares only about
himself. He has said that he will be a dictator on day one of a new term in
office. He wants us to believe that he will be a dictator for only one day. Only
fools can believe any such thing. Trump wants to be an authoritarian ruler not
a democratic one. He sees himself as being above the law, and, tragically, the
US Supreme Court has agreed with that undemocratic assertion at least to some
extent. If he is reelected, he will do everything he can to subvert American
democracy in order to insure that only his wealthy supporters ever benefit from
a president’s policies.
So. Is American
democracy dead? The answer, I think, is, “not quite.” Our democratic
institutions still mostly function as they are supposed to function. But
American democracy is ill, and its illness may become terminal. Our democracy
is under serious attack by what used to be one of its two major, democratic
political parties, the Republican Party. That attack has gravely wounded
American democracy. Trump and the MAGA movement have eroded the trust in
democracy of millions of Americans. In doing so, they have weakened the only
thing that makes democracy viable.
American
democracy is under threat, and there is only one way to preserve it. We must
not just defeat Trump in this year’s presidential election. We must crush him.
We must crush every politician who supports him and repeats his lies. To
preserve their democracy, the American people must rise up as one and drive
Donald Trump and his anti-democratic MAGA movement out of American politics.
May it be so.
[1]
Namely, “trickle down economics,” in which wealth that is supposed to trickle
down to the mass of the people actually trickles up to a very small number of
very rich people.
[2]
He’s a war criminal because he launched a totally unjustified, unprovoked war
of aggression against Iraq.
[3]
Yes. I know that that statement makes me sound like an elitist snob. Yet
whether I am one or not, the way millions of Americans support Donald Trump can
be explained in no other way.
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