The choice that will define the next generation of American life

Journalist Dorothy Thompson and 25-year-old John Lewis (photo credits: Getty Images, John Lewis on X)

“It’s time to unite!” This was what Governor Glenn Youngkin said when he endorsed Donald Trump this week.

Have you heard the call? Have you been lured by the siren?

Donald Trump wants unity around the cause of Trump, which hinges on a radical heresy that seeks to strike down the most enlightened idea in human history.

Consideration should be given to the meaning of unity. It sounds innocuous at first glance and even virtuous. Certainly, unified efforts can be virtuous, but often they are not. Interestingly, what tends to be remembered and celebrated within free societies is dissent. Dissent is beautiful, precious and fragile. It does not thrive in a climate of repression, revenge, intimidation and subjugation. Fueled by courage, the first virtue according to Aristotle, dissent is what lights the darkness and shines a light on injustice, cruelty, apathy and all of the diseases of the heart and human soul. Dissent is the righteous cry of the right against the wrong.  No matter where a voice has risen and declared, “Enough! No! Stop!” or cried out for fairness, peace or justice, no matter the bleakness, darkness or repression at hand, ultimately, it will be heard. 

Certain truths are immutable, and freedom is one. Freedom is misunderstood as a political philosophy. It is neither gentle nor tolerant about assaults on elemental truths around the dignity of the human being. Fierceness and non-violence are utterly compatible, just as are fear and violence. There is a difference between meanness and toughness, as there is between cowardice and bravery. We celebrate greatness in America, and there is no achievement greater than the rarefied spaces where the greatest citizens are remembered as totems of all the worthy things that truly matter in life. There are no perfect people, but there are transcendent ones who are able — through acts and words — to fulfill the highest ideals of human possibility. From them is a great accumulation of wisdom, which is the shared inheritance of human civilization.

When John Lewis set across the Edmund Pettus Bridge at age 25 was he tough? Was he brave?

When he was attacked by armed police and beaten by their clubs, who was strong and who was weak? Who was brave, and who was cowardly?

Later in life, when he was a powerful and admired man, what did John Lewis preach?Was it revenge? Retribution?

Here is what he famously said instead. This is what Abraham Lincoln — another moral giant — would have understood as an appeal to the “better angels of our nature.”

We may have all come here on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.

Since there are 241 days remaining until the choice that will define the next generation of American life, it makes sense to visualize an outcome that would be realized if the election were held tomorrow. Imagine if Trump were to win, and did everything that he has said he would do. What does that look like? What even would be the nature of an offense that would trigger Trump, his MAGA coalition or any of the thousands of promised functionaries who would be dispatched to enforce the cause of Trumpism across the government?

What is the glue that holds the center of the web together? What replaces fidelity to an idea about human dignity and liberty? What supplants the constitutional oath? What abrogates and supersedes it? The answer to all of these questions is Trumpism and Trump.

What dogma binds MAGA?  Who or what is at the center of it? Who is part of it? What do they believe in, and what don’t they believe?

Here is a story about an American journalist who witnessed the collapse of democracy in 1930s Europe. She was a wise woman and a keen observer, but not inerrant. One thing Hitler and Trump share in common is the ability to arouse derision, contempt and underestimation among those they repulse the most. Derision and enlightenment have never been adequate defenses against cults of personality that have humorless dispositions towards the idea that freedom and unity are oppositional qualities.

When Dorothy Thompson first set eyes on Hitler she both underestimated and insulted him. 

Here is what she wrote at the initial meeting:

He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill poised and insecure.

When Hitler took power her impertinence was avenged. She was kicked out of Germany, and wrote about the experience. Her column ended with a spectacular flourish that spoke to something fundamental about being an American:

My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man. That is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people—an old Jewish idea. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris. Worse things can happen to one.

Thompson watched the fall of European democracy in the 1930s and understood the danger America faced. Even now people underestimate the danger of Trump because the character of the dictator has always been foreign in America. She understood this perfectly, and addressed it directly. It stands as an ominous warning for our time. It is past time for all of us to understand who Trump is.

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say 'Heil' to him, nor will they call him 'Führer' or 'Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'" 

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