The bloodless transformation of our government into a harmful instrument of power is surreal. The people’s obligation to object to the executive’s abuse of his power is one we’ve never been called to on this scale. Normally, we rely on Congress to check the president through the power of impeachment and to assert its authority as a law-making body vis-a-vis the president, whose proper role is to execute and abide by Congress’s will. This isn’t happening. Instead, governmental institutions are being gutted and the president is forcefully intimidating universities, broadcasting companies, newspapers, and prominent individuals who together uphold our civil liberties, maintain civil society, and keep us informed.
Kim Scheppele is an American sociologist who studies authoritarian regimes and those who oppose them. She points out that Americans are relatively disadvantaged because they have never experienced authoritarianism before. They differ from the Poles, for example, whose history of subjugation over the centuries has served them well. When the independence of their judiciary was threatened in recent years, Poles immediately took to the streets and averted an erosion of the rule of law.
Our power to resist Donald Trump’s authoritarian tendencies will never be greater than it is right now. As Trump indulges his appetite for absolute power and makes a kleptocracy out of “the land of the brave,” will Americans sit by?
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What is a touchstone? It’s a special rock mineralogists use to determine whether a shiny object is really gold. Metaphorically, a touchstone is anything that helps distinguish between what is truly excellent and what’s counterfeit. Intellectually, touchstones illuminate what’s wrong with Trumpism and how to oppose it incisively, in a way that’s appropriate and principled.
Touchstones recall what’s best in our political tradition and galvanize us to reject the fake, crude representations Trump constantly spews. At present, American politics is a battle between his word and ours. We must prevail against a leader who is un-American and mean.
Here’s political historian Timothy Snyder in late February, outlining why Trump’s position on Ukraine is so damaging to our position in the world, and so unwise. Trump’s public denigration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed a willful disrespect for our own revolutionary tradition and, indeed, for the values of the entire Western world. Disdaining European friendships intrinsic to our security and prosperity, Trump has inexplicably cottoned to a pro-Russian narrative, subverting American ideals of self-government for the sake of a repressive foreign power bent on weakening us.
No matter what Trump claims, his radical positions on Ukraine and on trade are deeply damaging to our international relationships and US stature in the world. His policies weaken the nation and harm its citizens. He relishes driving the US into isolation–a situation that benefits only himself but not us.
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In this series of brief posts, I’m sharing “touchstones” of political opposition that I find inspiring and reassuring. Everyday, the Trump administration furnishes fresh cause for patriotic outrage. The situation is unprecedented, requiring that patriots everywhere fashion new, peaceable responses appropriate to the time. We can’t delegate this work to the nation’s ostensible leaders. They, too, are confused, be-nighted; some appear dangerously incapable of doing the right thing.
Only broad, peaceful, nonpartisan opposition can change the disposition of our legislatures and limit the harm that Trump is inflicting on the American people and our national identity.
In these circumstances, we can derive strength from the example of forebears who relied strictly on reason, principle, and conscience to oppose that which would rob humans of their natural dignity, their God-given rights.
I encourage you to listen to what Marianne Williamson has to say. The courage to stand up and speak out comes from being in touch with your own conscience, your own in-dwelling sense of goodness, your own inner light.
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The 2022 election cycle again established the superiority of “the poll” over “the polls.” The poll, of course, refers to actual voting. For most of United States history, it was the one and only numerical measure of the people’s sentiment, occurring when voters went to their polling places and, by casting ballots, embraced or cast away candidates seeking office. Only this poll is truly reliable, only it is authoritative. Only it accurately represents the people’s will.
Increasingly in recent years, newscasters have been besotted by the public opinion surveys commonly referred to as “polls.” Public-opinion polls are mere samples of the entire population, and, because their results can’t be compared to any real world action, their results are inevitably hypothetical. Nevertheless, because they are statistical and conducted by social “scientists,” and, above all, because they were once fairly good at predicting election outcomes, these so-called “polls” continue to enjoy a lot of legitimacy. Newscasters feel justified in reporting on them and using them to construct a narrative of what is happening, or about to, in a political contest. It’s unfortunate that these opinion surveys continue to be taken as a guide to what voters will actually do, when Election Day comes.
Everyday experience teaches us of the gulf that separates our wishes and our deeds. I might long for a certain event to occur; I might wish for a certain idea or figure to gain popularity; and I might approve of certain promises ventured in the course of a campaign. But, when voting day comes, all those broad and momentous possibilities vanish, and I’m left with just one or two very simple practical alternatives. Namely, will I go to vote, and will I check the box by one candidate’s name or the other? The possibilities that any one candidate represents are strictly bounded. Even if I truly admire a candidate on the ballot, I recognize that my vote is more a blessing than a transaction. Elevating a candidate to office is an act of trust; fidelity to the Constitution is the only guarantee I expect in return.
Given the dire politics of today, the notion that the United States is undergoing a steep and irreversible decline is easy to entertain. The lifespan of republics being notoriously short, and the signs of decay being abundant, American prospects are suddenly, unexpectedly bleak. The nation that’s risen to such heights, that’s given its people so much, now seems destined to decline and fall. The conflict between the parties has been going on for so long, and the tone of public life is so low, and the bad people among us so bold and numerous, that many of us have reluctantly given up the nation for lost.
We have resisted and objected to each new outrage, each new manifestation of mendacity and corruption, but with such mixed results and with such persistence of myriad malignant forces that many of us are demoralized and exhausted.
Americans who have fought for years to marginalize Trump and keep good people in power have yet to score a decisive victory. Even now, two years after American voters defeated Trump at the polls, they cannot yet rejoice. It’s still too soon to rejoice, too soon to say that the federal system is safe.
Take heart. Americans have seen their nation deteriorating before. To be honest, much of US history consists of backsliding times, when wholesome pride in this glorious nation, and righteous service to it, has been nearly snuffed out, thanks to the wily machinations of low-lifes and thieves.
Even in times of peace and prosperity, the United States has suffered setbacks and indignities, as corrupt and self-seeking charlatans (such as James G. Blaine, depicted above) have tried to rise, aiming to monopolize a great system of government they can only disgrace.
Long is the fight, but good Americans are too stalwart to cede victory to the dark forces still pressing in.
Image: Bernhard Gillam, “The Honor of the Country in Danger,” published in Puck magazine 29 October 1884, from this source.
IMAGE NOTE: In this masterful 1884 political cartoon by Bernhard Gillam, the ghosts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln stand watch over a presidential chair that the unworthy James G. Blaine aspires to. As the United States approached the centenary of its Founding in 1889, would the century that began with George Washington as president end in disgrace with the likes of Blaine? (Opponents dubbed Senator Blaine, “the Continental Liar from the State of Maine.”)
In the 1884 election, Democrats sought to rout a Republican party that, since its glory days in the Civil War (1861-1865), had grown disreputable and corrupt. The Republican Party’s rise to power in the 1850s on the strength of its principled opposition to slavery, coupled with its noble defense of the Union and victory over the rebel proslavery states, issued in an enduring political monopoly. Beginning with Lincoln’s election in 1860, Republicans controlled the White House for twenty-four years. The Democratic Party, having been tolerant of slavery before the war, was tainted and nationally anathema for all this time.
During Reconstruction (1865-1876), Republican control of the federal government guaranteed that former slaveholders would not regain power and undo all that the Civil War had so painfully accomplished. Excessive power in the hands on one party, however, allowed political mendacity and corruption to flourish. In addition, support gradually waned for the monopolistic use of federal power (including military power) to protect minority rights in Southern states. Open-ended coercion violated the principles of self-government and reserved state powers on which the Constitution is based.
In 1876, these contradictions and other, more ignoble considerations led the Republicans to abandon the Reconstruction policies that had kept the former Confederate states from reverting to the status quo ante bellum. Thereafter, commercial prosperity replaced racial equality as the Republican Party’s top priority. The Grand Old Party’s degenerate condition became unmistakably evident in 1884, when it chose the slippery James G. Blaine as its presidential nominee.
In the cartoon, Blaine is depicted as an imposter who is out of his league. His scandal-ridden past is indelibly tattooed on his flesh. The flimsy cloak he wears can’t hide his true nature as a servile tool.
He stands abased before the lofty legacy of past presidents. His hat, labeled “Corruption,” is falling off, as, quaking, he begins his assault on the nation’s highest office. Leaning against him and pushing him from behind is Jay Gould, who excelled in getting government concessions for the railroads he owned. Gould has his sights set on stacking the bench. The paper he holds reads “Four Supreme Court judges to be appointed by the next president.”
Also behind Blaine is Stephen W. Dorsey, a former US Senator implicated in the “Star Routes Scandal,” whereby a circle of profiteers bilked the Treasury of millions of dollars by colluding on bids for carrying the mail. Dorsey is depicted as a bootlicker. Next to him on the floor is a paper that reads “Honesty No Requisite for the Presidency (Blaine’s Theory).”
Finally, to the right of the stairs stands Benjamin F. Butler, dressed up as a court jester possessing a “Bargain with Blaine.” Butler’s controversial actions as the military governor of wartime New Orleans, coupled with his opportunistic political maneuverings, made him a weathervane of the Gilded Age. Vastly wealthy as a result of both honest and questionable business dealings during the Civil War, Butler was arguably providing cover for Blaine in 1884, for he was on the ticket as a third-party presidential candidate for the People’s Party. Rumor held that Butler’s candidacy was a Republican-backed sham, to draw off votes from Blaine’s opponent, Democrat Grover Cleveland.
It was no use. On Election Day in November 1884, Americans went to the polls and saved the nation from James G. Blaine. They rejected the stink of Republican corruption and, for the first time since 1856, elected a Democratic president.
