Where are we going?
I don’t understand how we, as people and a nation got to this horrible place. For the first time in my life, I am questioning whether our democracy will survive the next decade. I believe that our nation is heading toward a less democratic more autocratic system of government. Here’s why I’m feeling that way:
The first sign is the American people, by and large, are not apoplectic over what transpired on January 6th. Make no mistake about it. President Trump was at the center of an overt attempt to overthrow our democracy. Rep. Liz Chaney got it right when she said in her opening remarks at the House Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the U.S. Capital that he “summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the fire.” He was the instigator and the provocateur. In my mind, the only unanswered question at this point is whether there is a “smoking gun” that directly links the President and/or his surrogates to the pre-planning of the insurrection.
President Trump didn’t like the legitimate election outcome and tried to thwart the peaceful transition of power. That is seditious. That’s not hyperbole, but simply what occurred. Donald Trump was hell-bent on staying in office and would have accomplished his goal were it not for Vice President Mike Pence refusing to buy into the scheme
Nevertheless, the majority of Trump’s supporters continue to buy his complete fabrications “that the election was stolen, that violence is justified in order to rectify it and that the rules and norms that hold our society together don’t manner” (from David Brooks’ sobering June 8th New York Times column entitled “The Jan. 6 Committee Has Already Blown It.”)
Donald Trump is an antidemocratic — Putin-like figure. He has absolutely no regard for our nation’s democratic values, our history, or our constitutional system. I have, no doubt whatsoever that if he were to win the election in 2024, he’d use every tool at his disposal to remain in office for life.
The Republican Party has abandoned its historic traditional conservative roots and has morphed into an ultra-rightwing authoritarian party that is bent on exploiting the social and cultural fissures that divide us.
The Trump Republican Party is not concerned about being viewed as racist, anti-immigrant, anti-LBGQT, too strident, or too extreme. To rephrase Republican conservative icon, Barry Goldwater, who was one of the Republican leaders who helped to convince President Nixon to step down after Watergate, “Extremist in defense of the MAGA agenda is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of exploiting the fears and resentments of white working-class voters is no virtue.”
The second sign of our democracy’s demise is the Republican Party’s unwillingness, even in face of the recent harrowing Uvalde mass school shooting, to consider enacting meaningful measures to try and stem the gun mayhem that is killing our children at an astronomical rate. This has nothing to do with the Second amendment which is related to arming the militia in America during colonial times. It has everything to do with the Republican Party being a captive of the white nationalist movement, the gun manufacturers, the gun lobby, and Secondamendment crazies.
Instead of outlawing the sale of semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines, they are talking about hardening schools, i.e., single points of egress, bulletproof glass, ballistic blankets, prison-like door locking mechanisms, additional armed officers, and arming teachers and other school personnel.
The thought of arming school staff to protect our children in our schools is beyond my comprehension. It is especially absurd in light of recent evidence that trained law enforcement personnel in Uvalde stood by and did absolutely nothing to thwart the assailant. Adding a security function to our educator’s job responsibilities is total abdication of our elected leaders’ responsibility to address escalating gun violence in our nation.
Where does this end? Do we also harden hospitals; doctor offices; churches, synagogues and mosques; theaters, libraries, sports venues and shopping malls and arm doctors, nurses, ushers, ticket takers, non-performing actors waiting in the wings or athletes that are sitting on the bench waiting to get into the game?
Do we establish zones in which carrying a concealed weapon is encouraged? How would that work? Would we input where we are going on a Google map and instantly learn, based on up-to-date crime data, whether we are entering a highcrime zone and should consider packing a concealed weapon. Would our phone vibrate when we entered the danger zone, so we can ready our trigger finger?
This may sound absolutely bizarre, but it probably isn’t. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito offered the view very recently that carrying a concealed weapon on the subway might make sense for “people who work late at night in Manhattan,” and wondered why they should not be able to easily do so.
I don’t want to live in Judge Alito’s brave new world that reflects what Wayne La Pierre, the C.E.O. of the National Rifle Association said after the horror of Sandy Hook Elementary School, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” I have absolutely no desire, whatsoever, to ride the subway with a car full of folks packing concealed weapons who are anxious about their safety. The fact that he thinks this appropriate response to an increase in gun violence, is mindboggling to me.
J. Michael Luttig, formerly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, considered an icon in conservative legal circles, in his testimony at the June 16th hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol warmed that “January 6 was… a war for American’s democracy, a war irresponsibly instigated and prosecuted by the former president, his political party allies, and his supporters.” Further he warned us that Trump and his supporters remain “a clear and present danger to American democracy.”
We have been forewarned. If Ukraine has taught us anything; it is that we must not take our democracy for granted.