The eyes of theworld are upon us
The idealization of America as a “city upon a hill,” with the “eyes of all people … upon us” comes froma 1630 sermon by John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The quotation is most often associated with Ronald Reagan, but other recent presidents have spoken or alluded to it.
The eyes of all people truly are upon us, still.
Thatwas evident when joy burst out in Europe and elsewhere on the news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the essential 270 electoral votes to become president and vice president of the United States.
Bells rang in Paris, people celebrated outside our embassy in Berlin, and fireworks left over from Guy Fawkes Day burst over London.
Congratulations poured in from leaders of most of theworld’s other democracies, including French President Emanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and from both sides of the political aisle in Canada.
The most touching tribute was from Anne Hidalgo, themayor of Paris. “Welcome back America!” she tweeted. Those three words reaffirmed our nation’ s immense importance, not simply as freedom’s leader in war and peace but, fundamentally, as an enduring and inspirational example of democracy in practice.
The essence of that hard-won respect consists of the peaceful conduct of our elections and the orderly, routine transfers of power that had ensued without fail ever since the Civil War.
But that is not what theworld is seeing in the aftermath of this election.
In a situation without precedent in this or any other present-day democracy, President Trump, his Cabinet and his slavish enablers are carrying on as if hewon the election and does not intend to vacate the office. His lawyers are papering the nation with frivolous litigation. He refuses to initiate the transition process. He denies President-elect Biden access to key intelligence briefings.
Meanwhile, he has purged the defense secretary and other sensitive officials, replacing them with people chosen for their loyalty to him rather than to the Constitution. CIA Director Gina Haspel is reportedly on his hit list, too.
That’s what dictators do to stay in power, so the possibility of a coup attempt by this president cannot be ruled out.
Even if that’s not the intent, the damage is already grave. He means to destabilize and even cripple the government if he can’t keep it, by painting the Biden administration as illegitimate and our elections as untrustworthy.
Why? Malicious spite is one possibility. Or hemay be scheming to run again in 2024, and using his defiance to build a campaign fund. Some observers think it’s related to the runoff for Georgia’s two Senate seats. It could simply be his pathological ego at work. Them an who de lights in mocking other people as “losers” cannot bear to be called one himself.
Whatever the reason, Trump’s conduct is petty and perverse. It will be an indelible stain on his already tawdry record and on the accounts of his supporters in Congress and in other alternative universes like Florida’s capital.
It is subversion, not patriotism.
Only in states that he lost, Trump and his apologists are bellowing charges of fraud without an iota of evidence. They are slandering the thousands of election workers of both major parties— the secretaries of state, precinct officials and ballot counters, most of them volunteers— who, like health careworkers, are American heroes. They braved the coronavirus and do not deserve to be subjected to such trumpery.
The defamation has been vicious, notably by the two embattled Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who demand the resignation of Georgia
Secretary of State Brad Raf fens per ger, a member of their own party, over supposed “failures” they could not identify. Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Trump pressured them to do it.
This is our most perilous moment since the Civil War.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds nearly80% of Americans have accepted that Biden won, including more than half of Republicans. But that leaves one of every five Americans in thrall to Trump’s biggest lie yet, susceptible to who knows what else.
An example: One of the organizers of a pro-Trump demonstration planned for Saturday, Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes, wrote this:
“Wemust refuse to EVER recognize this as a legitimate election, and refuse to recognize Biden as a legitimate winner, and refuse to ever recognize him as the president of the United States.”
The people helping Trump to whip up this un-American fury are as unpatriotic as he is. We have already called out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for proposing schemes to overturn the popular vote. Florida’s attorney general, Ashley Moody, is nowhis partner in dishonor for signing on in support of Trump’s baseless lawsuit to block certification of Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes. That serves only Trump, not the people of Florida who elected her and pay her salary.
No one remembers Hillary Clinton disparaging the outcome or papering the country with lawsuits because she didn’t win four years ago. President Obama, knowing that Trump intended to trash his entire legacy, nonetheless invited him to the White House and greeted him cordially two days after the election. Though more Americans had voted against Trump than for him, they accepted the outcome with determination to have a better one in 2020. They trusted in the process and in the Constitution.
Trump is worse than a poor loser. He’s a poor American.
So is every Republican office holder who is either actively or passively supporting him. Even in the most charitable light, they are sniveling cowards for fear of Trump and his voters. That is how democracies die.
Some good news, at week’s end, was of some Republican senators breaking with the administration’s denial of intelligence briefings for the president-elect, which is a threat to national security.
Asked by the media the other day why he thinks only a few Republican senators had congratulated him, Biden didn’t take the bait.
“They will. They will,” he said with a smile.
Before Trump, Republicans considered Ronald Reagan the paradigm of their party and of the presidency. Many Democrats admired his demeanor in office, whatever they thought of his policies.
It is timely to recall some of what he said in his farewell address in 1989.
“I’ve spoken of the shining city allmy political life, but I don’t knowif I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind itwas a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, thewalls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”
That is also how most Americans and our friends elsewhere still care to see it.