Trump can't extinguish the torch of liberty

This was the headline announcing the latest Gallup poll surveying American opinions on democracy: 

Record Low in U.S. Satisfied With Way Democracy Is Working

The summary begins this way:

A new low of 28% of U.S. adults are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the country. The current figure is down from the prior low 35% measured shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by rioters trying to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Faithlessness is predictably more acute among Republicans than Democrats and independents, but the numbers are all appalling. 

Here is the current political situation in America:

The 2024 debate is currently a fight over a word, “democracy,”  that the overwhelming majority of the country feels indifference towards. The political class, myself included, can make great encomiums towards the word, but in the end, it might only mean something to people who feel like they have something to lose, as opposed to the people who feel like they’ve already lost and are committed to a dogma of anger and lies that says they can feel better by tearing down than building up. 

There is a rhetorical sloppiness that has drifted into the current conversation about the catastrophic consequences for the nation and the world if Trump were to return to the presidency. There is a sentiment of hopelessness that has seeped into the conversation about what might happen after a Trump victory that posits America will turn into a police state without elections, laws, courts, rights, or any possibility of opposing the newly minted dictator at the hour of his triumph. 

Liz Cheney illustrated this point perfectly when she told a New Hampshire audience that they might not be able to vote in 2028 if Donald Trump were elected in 2024. The point garners headlines and audience gasps in the right venues, but it is simply not true. There will be elections in 2028, and Donald Trump won’t be on the ballot because of the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution. Furthermore, the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Amendments will remain inviolate and beyond Trump’s tampering. The corrupt Thomas court will not be able to discharge the Bill of Rights, and there will always be some multitude of millions in America that will never submit to tyranny, intimidation, oppression, violence and murder. It is from these Americans that a moral force capable of confronting the malevolence of the human spirit manifested by the MAGA extremists will emerge. One day, someday, the “better angels of our nature” will arise again and contest an amoral present with a vision for something more grand and just. 

Sometimes, it is hard to comprehend the assault on truth, reality and the factual circumstances of recorded events without being overwhelmed, confused and bewildered. How can it be, after all, that a rotten character like Elise Stefanik can appear on national television and call criminals, “hostages?” How can she possibly denounce antisemitism when it passes from the lips of a Harvard president, but tremble in ecstasy when she hears the words of Hitler, Goebbels, Streicher, Goering, Himmler, and Bormann pass from Trump’s venomous tongue? Perhaps the key question is whether her dishonesty could conceivably prevail against reality and erase it in favor of myth? 

This has happened before in America. Understanding the myth of the Lost Cause is elemental towards understanding the power of exhaustion, indifference, self-interest and cynicism to erase reality, spread amnesia and eradicate a shared memory of sacrifice, heroism and genius. 

Ulysses Grant lived an epic life. He is an American hero as great as any who has ever lived. He was a giant who was the most famous American in the world when he died in 1885, and the most deeply revered. When the 20th century began he was routinely cited in the company of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln as America’s most distinguished leader. He was a military genius, who crushed the Confederate Army, revolutionized warfare, created modern logistics, and emancipated over 4 million human beings at the point of a sword at the head of America’s first army of liberation. He personified the qualities of perseverance, fortitude, and resilience, yet by the 100th anniversary of Appomattox where he accepted the surrender of Robert E. Lee, he was remembered as an inferior general to the Confederate loser who butchered his troops, was chronically drunk and fantastically corrupt. Of course, none of those things were true, but perception can easily become reality when ignorance, determination and ideology combine to erase history. 

The larger point is this: have no doubt that if Ulysses S. Grant could be erased, forgotten and remembered as Lee’s inferior militarily, morally or in any way, then it is entirely possible for January 6 criminals to be lionized by a corrupt American regime as patriots even though they tried to extinguish what true patriots built, just as the Confederate Army did. 

Grant was the nation’s first civil rights president and Lincoln’s political heir.

 It should be noted as a matter of historical record that until Donald Trump finished his term — and claimed the distinction of being the worst president in American history —the ignominy was held by the man who preceded Lincoln, whose only real competition for the dishonor was the man who followed Lincoln. 

Grant followed the abysmal Andrew Johnson, and did everything he could do to advance the civil rights of the newly freed Black Americans who were struggling for human rights against an insurgency of hate and unbelievable brutality in the American South. It is little remembered that Ulysses Grant created the US Justice Department, and waged war against the Ku Klux Klan, demolishing it by 1872. 

When Grant left office in 1876 he was forlorn and realistic about the future of Black Americans in the South. He knew the truth — that reconstruction had failed. Northern voters were tired, Southerners were defiant, and there was no appetite among the American people to expand democracy. Instead, it contracted and the nascent human rights of millions of Black citizens were swallowed up by American apartheid for 89 years before the Voting Rights Act was passed. 

What followed the collapse of reconstruction was terror, lynching, torture and destruction for millions of Black people, while millions of White people celebrated democracy. 

The simple truth about this moment can be found in the history of the destruction of the Ku Klux Klan in 1872. The Klan was reborn, destroyed, and then reborn again. The malevolence which fertilizes its re-emergence is found within human beings, just as the spirit of love and justice necessary to defeat it is harbored in human hearts. 

Elise Stefanik and Donald Trump are nothing new, and yet they remain terribly frightening because they stand for the eternal proposition that what was won at great cost can be lost with a whisper and a whimper.  The American people will decide. Like always, we will move towards and away from a just society, sometimes in deeply contradictory ways, depending on the currents of our age. 

The idea that a Trump victory will vassalize all of us in an instant is not true. Should such a terrible event happen, it will not be the equivalent of an asteroid strike that extinguished the dinosaurs. Instead, it will open a new chapter and a dangerous one for all of us. For many of us, surrendering our freedoms will never be an option. Most Americans would tremble in fear if Donald Trump invoked the insurrection after his inauguration and sent tanks to Chicago. Some of us would be ready to stand in front of those tanks, and be prepared to be rolled over by them so others could find the courage to stand in front of the next tank. It has always been this way. 

Maybe someday darkness will fall over America, but it won’t be Donald Trump drawing the blinds. He will never be a force powerful enough to extinguish the torch of liberty; only the American people can allow that to happen. 

Be Not Afraid. 

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