DEFENSE OF TRUTH, DEMOCRACY NEVER FINISHED
President Joe Biden promised during the 2020 campaign to lower the national blood pressure and return the country to some sense of normalcy. No rage and/or middle-of-the-night tweets. Weekends without news. Decorum from the leader of the free world. Cordial relations with the media. A return to actual policymaking. We so quickly adapt to the newest normal that we soon forget how thoroughly unproductive (aside from tax cuts for the rich) and incompetent was the prior administration.
But six months into the new administration, the political culture and media seem not to have accepted a federal government that lacks the sort of hysteria, controversy and scandal that defined the previous presidency. The tendency to overwrought drama (The infrastructure deal is in peril!) and the constant expectation of doom (The deal is on track but danger ahead!) suggest not only a desperation to attract eyeballs and clicks but also a cynicism that things cannot really have improved all that much. But they have.
The government got 300 million coronavirus shots in arms. More than 2 million jobs have returned, and growth is up — in significant part because of the mammoth American Rescue Plan. Biden returned from a successful overseas trip, which rather than embarrassing his countrymen reassured them that a U.S. president could be respected in the world again.
Back home, Biden has secured a historic and overwhelmingly popular infrastructure deal which, if Republicans balk, can sail through on a reconciliation measure. The Cabinet is stocked with diverse and competent people; an exceptionally diverse slate of judges has been nominated.
If you feel rattled and unsteady, you may be consuming too much social media. Your ongoing anxiety may also be the reaction to a Republican Party that has adopted hysteria, crisis manufacturing, lying and scare tactics as its default:
The border is in crisis! (Actually, the vast majority of unaccompanied minors are now processed in an orderly fashion and the administration has begun to reunite children separated from their families.)
Vice President Kamala Harris’s chief of staff does not allow just any old friend to talk to her! (Really, this is a problem?)
Children are being indoctrinated by critical race theory to hate America! (No, but it is good we are learning more about our history.)
Do not get me wrong. Our democracy is under assault, because one party has rejected commitment to truth and democracy. It spends its time undermining faith in elections and suppressing voting as a ill-conceived strategy for reclaiming power.
Rather than a return to unbridled fear we felt under the past administration as it stomped on democratic norms, coddled dictators, engaged in corruption and all but ignored a pandemic, we should reach a sobering conclusion: Defending democracy and truth is never completed.
The voters came to their senses to oust former President Donald Trump, but our democracy depends on the ongoing devotion of active citizens to reject authoritarian schemes. It requires that voter suppression be met with extraordinary voter organization and turnout. If democracy seems still on shaky ground, you should not be surprised. Democracy has often been and will continue to be, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, only a generation away from extinction.
It is a good time to appreciate how far we have come in six months, as well as the ongoing work it will take to keep our democracy from the clutches of anti-democratic, white supremacists. Democracy has never been for the timid or the passive.