One thing that most Americans can probably agree on is that we are in a terrible state: angry, mistrustful, divided, and lacking clear paths to escape this ever building conflict. We bemoan the condition and at least some of us—mostly those on the right but also some on the left—prepare for the coming conflagration. But for the most part we are too quiescent. We are like the frog in the frying pan, content when it is cool, happy when it warms, and unable to leap out by the time it is frying us.
We watch, passively, despairingly, the building betrayal of democracy. We grow passive. Many of us have abandoned TV news because it is so depressing. We just want the trouble to end. We have even convinced ourselves that the authoritarian movements of the Christian right will eventually fall back into the background. Just give it time.
Where is the courage to make a decisive move? It now seems entirely possible that Congressional Republicans will shut down our government and strip our military of much needed leadership. It seems likely that Donald Trump will delay the pending trials long enough to complete a presidential run and, considering Biden’s age, poor poll numbers, and tepid persona, win the election of 2024. Then exact the retribution he’s yearned for and construct the authoritarian government we’ve feared.
Nowhere, outside of the legal system, do I see the resolve and decisive action that’s up to the task of bringing down Trump, Trumpism, and the expanding authoritarian movement in our nation. A movement clearly portrayed by Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny) and Steven Levitski and Daniel Ziblatt (Tyranny of the Minority) and many others who have rung the warning bells with increasing urgency.
The FBI notes that 12,000,000 Americans are perfectly happy with the possibility of a violent overthrow of the government. They warn that the primary threat to the US government come from domestic terror groups. 30 percent or more of our citizens seem perfectly happy to follow Trump’s angry, chaotic lead no matter where it goes.
Millions upon millions of us want to stop this movement. Yet who, outside of the legal system, is standing up. Who is taking the necessary steps to bring this movement to a halt.
The great majority of us still believe in the American democratic process. We want it to work its miracle: Trump and the Trumpites will be defeated at the polls, accept their defeat and fade into the background. I want that, too. Very badly. It would be far and away the best solution, and it would renew our faith in the power, even the majesty, of our democratic process and culture.
But I doubt that Trump and his followers will accept legitimate defeat. Nor am I sure that democratic processes are up to the task of insuring victory. It would require a massive, passionate effort to bring voters to the booths, to persuade those who sit on the middle to turn those who don’t like Biden enough but find Trump terrifying and repulsive.
We need to act before a kind of tyranny from our side seems the only possible way to stop Trump and his criminal allies.
Years ago Trump said himself, says that he could kill someone in plain sight on Fifth Avenue and no one would punish him. His boast was chilling then but perhaps prescient. I took it seriously at the time, wrote about its plausibility, but didn’t really think we’d come to that.In an essay I published a few years ago, I took Trump’s brazen boast a little further. I wondered whether Hitler, that is, a person utterly uncommitted to democratic niceties, would be arrested if he walked down a boulevard in an American city.
Take the interaction between Trump and Judge Chutkan as a case in point. Trump repeatedly threatens witnesses and poisons the potential jury pool, hinting at massive violence if he is jailed for those actions. The judge, reputedly a strong and ethical professional, has threatened a gag order. But we know that Donald Trump won’t abide by the gag order. He’ll continue to lie and threaten. He will taunt Judge Chutkin, who, with the best of intentions and great strength of character, nonetheless will likely back off. Like the rest of us, she has virtually no experience with a man and a movement like Trumpism. He will not be imprisoned and will continue to wreak havoc.
We, the liberals will almost certainly respond ambivalently. We will wish that Trump and his enablers suffer the consequences that any other citizen would, but we are afraid to meet the Trumpian threat of violence with sufficient force of our own. That might violate our democratic principles. We want to win this battle in the courts, in light of justice and democratic values. We don’t want to be like “them.”
And, of course, we’d also fear that they, the Trumpists, would do to us what we have done to them—only with great vehemence once returned to power. This is my fear: that they have intimidated those who love our democratic ways.
But what if we end up being principled losers. What if we’d rather be defeated by a neo-fascist leader than dirty or hands and violate our principles—even by temporarily moderating or suspending the application of those principles—as we have done during times of war.
I fear that we, like many late empire cultures, have become complacent, unable or unwilling to defend our dearest institutions and values. We can’t seem to hop out of that frying pan. Or we won’t. At our best we might take the leap, but it is seemingly less likely to me.
Over the years, in response to particular essays, some readers and friends have chided me on what they see as my great pessimism about this country that I love. But I see my writing as more in the spirit of a Jeremiad, a “cri de coeur.” I’m asking us—me, as well—to come to our senses, to do something with great conviction and strength. Do we dare?
Barry Dym 