Has the Time Come to Give Up on the American People?
Succumbing to ignorance, superstition and propaganda, Americans turn to authoritarianism.
No less an astute observer of America than Alexis de Tocqueville noted, “I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country, as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.” He went on to say, “The subjection of individuals will increase…not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.” Prescient man.
Future historians will describe the first half of the twenty-first century as the decline of American civilization and end of Pax Americana, when moral decay combined with complacency, ignorance and superstition led Americans to willingly give up all that the Founding Fathers bequeathed them for a romp with authoritarianism. They will label it the “Trumpian Age” and “Trump Era.” It will be compared to the eerily similar Gilded Age, marked by gross income and wealth inequality, unfettered plutocrats, bought politicians and rampant corruption. They will explore why the United States, in giving up on its own democracy and freedoms, followed suit abroad, abandoning its friends and allies. Political decline, they will write, was accompanied by senseless wars, domestic civil strife a la Weimar Germany and economic collapse, ultimately resulting in the breakup of the country into “Red” and “Blue” nation-states.
Far-fetched, you say? Read Robert Kagan’s “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending” in the Washington Post last week. He paints a dark future for America, replete with loss of freedoms, persecutions and violence. A scholar at Brookings, Kagan admonishes, “In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship.”
He methodically lays out how the checks and balances in our political system have failed us in face of a shameless and brazen actor like Donald Trump, ranging from Republicans’ refusal to impeach and convict out of fear, to how Trump is boldly defying the courts today, having been charged with 91 felony counts. And how is it that he can get away with this open challenge to the rule of law? Per Kagan:
Trump wields a clout that transcends the laws and institutions of government, based on the unswerving personal loyalty of his army of followers.
Trump’s power comes from his following, not from the institutions of American government, and his devoted voters love him precisely because he crosses lines and ignores the old boundaries. They feel empowered by it, and that in turn empowers him.
[H]e doesn’t have to achieve anything to retain their support — his failure to build the wall in his first term in no way damaged his standing with millions of his loyalists. They have never asked anything of him other than that he triumph over the forces they hate in American society. And that, we can be sure, will be Trump’s primary mission as president.
It is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it.
Pundits often refer to Republicans giving themselves up to a cult. In a recent court case involving a middle-aged couple convicted of storming the Capitol on January 6 and about to be sentenced, their daughter explained that Mom and Dad were “on their phones or tablets, consuming articles that are entirely made up or greatly exaggerated…seeing 1000s of people on pro-Trump sites & Facebook groups agree with even the most outlandish, ridiculous ideas.”
An atomized media environment these days enables citizens to reside comfortably in their chosen niche information bubbles and, in extremist contexts, subject themselves to brainwashing.
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols attributes this phenomenon to “bored and sated voters…more prone to reward showmanship, overblown promises, and made-for-TV rage than competence.” He adds that “candidates face the problem that most voters are low-information voters — a natural advantage for Trump (whose voters rely on their emotional attachment to him) but an obstacle for Biden.”
True, but I believe there is more to it. In my view, Americans have gotten even more fat, dumb and happy — or more aptly, complacent, over time. Just note the following statistics:
The U.S., with the world’s largest economy, ranks 51st among nations on the literacy scale, with 54 percent of Americans possessing a reading level below the 6th grade level. Only 13 percent of Americans know when the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Six out of 10 don’t know which countries the United States fought against in World War II. And less than a quarter know why we fought the British during the Revolutionary War. Oh, and two-thirds flunked the citizenship test which immigrants must pass to become U.S. citizens.
And, while we’re at it, nearly 70 percent of Americans believe in angels, 40 percent don’t believe in evolution, one in five believe in witches and two-thirds believe in ghosts and UFO’s.
Further on superstition:
An American Values Survey conducted in August reveals:
“Since March 2021, the share of QAnon believers has increased significantly, from 14% to 23% today. The percentage of Americans who completely reject QAnon beliefs has significantly decreased from 40% to 29% in 2023.”
29% of Republicans report being QAnon believers, increasing from 23% two years ago. Democrat believers in QAnon have doubled since March 2021, from 7% to 14%.
“Today, around one-quarter of Americans agree a storm is coming that will sweep away elites in power (27% in 2023 vs. 20% in 2021); that violence may be necessary to save the country (23% in 2023 vs. 15% in 2021); and that the government, media, and financial worlds are controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles (25% in 2023 vs. 15% in 2021).”
So, is it any wonder that Trump leads Biden by a four-point margin, according to a recent CNN poll, despite Trump’s ample legal troubles, a track record of erratic behavior and incompetence and plans in his Project 2025 to crush freedoms? Respondents, in fact, were more likely to say they would be proud to have him again as president by five points compared to Biden. Most Americans — and 80 percent of Republicans — told YouGov in August that they are convinced that the legal charges Trump faces are politically driven, and that they would expect Trump to do the same to his opponents. So much for respect for the rule of law.
Take my word for it: dictatorship is no fun. I have served as a diplomat in four countries under autocratic leadership and traveled in several others. I have witnessed up close and personal political oppression, from those who were sent to “re-education camps,” deprived employment and basic freedoms for their expressed beliefs, to others who were arrested, drowned, shot at or blown up trying to flee dictatorship. Still others were assassinated by a regime’s henchmen. I recall viscerally the sense of fear and foreboding among people in these countries, a hopelessness regarding their children’s futures. And the mind-numbingly pervasive state propaganda that leads people to risk arrest for surreptitiously tuning in to VOA and other foreign broadcasting or technically circumventing state-imposed internet firewalls.
The most memorable dissident I met was award-winning Vietnamese writer, Duong Thu Huong, whose novels, banned in Vietnam, portray the spiritual poverty, hypocrisy and corruption of her country’s one-party rule. For her outspokenness Duong was expelled from the communist party and imprisoned. Over lunch in Hanoi one day, she boasted to me that “I remain here so that I can spit in their face every day.” She reiterated that which she has stated in interviews: “My struggle is one that is shared by many others — to gain respect for my rights as a free citizen, here in my own country. Writing is the way I free myself; the way I make myself a free woman.”
People like Duong know that freedom and democracy must be earned, sometimes fought for. Unfortunately, too many Americans take them for granted, leaving themselves vulnerable to losing them. Not having lived under tyranny since independence and not having been invaded since 1812, Americans are clueless what it’s like to live under oppression.
As the statistics show, most Americans are semi-literate, grossly ignorant of their nation’s history, guided by superstition, don’t vote and apparently couldn’t give a crap about the rule of law. Do they deserve therefore to enjoy the fruits of democracy? If they return Trump to power next year, my conclusion is No. If a people aren’t committed to defending and upholding their freedoms, then they deserve whatever befalls them. Unfortunately, the rest of us will also suffer.
Am I predicting doom and gloom? No. I still hold onto the belief that, as in 2020, Americans will resoundingly reject Trump, that Biden’s solid legislation to improve and rebalance the economy and reduce wealth and income inequality will cause MAGAism and the threat of fascism to fade away, just as xenophobic Know Nothingism, the pre-World War II America First movement and McCarthyism eventually went away.
But nothing is guaranteed.
As Ben Franklin said when asked if we had a monarchy or a republic, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
I have yet to read the article but i am going to start momentarily. My comment is on the idea that this is a 21st Century phenomenon. It actually was lying dormant after the Progressive Era when gains were made regarding working conditions, collective bargaining and child labor laws. The Robber Baron, or Guilded Age, was the first roots of Fascism, it just was not an available label at the time. Immediately following the end of World War II the Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, largely with the total support of the GOP and sadly a significant contingent of the Democrats. (Knowing that at that time the Democratic Party was more influenced by Racism and Jim Crow than it is now.) That was the first salvo in the destruction of the nation. (We do have to keep in mind that America First was a major part of the prewar landscape and was populated by the likes of Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and a Congress full of American Firsters who attempted to pull off a coup but were never prosecuted. Oddly enough they were mostly GOP members as well. The 21st Century component is simply the last stages of the long term strategy of the GOP, couched in performative religion (to give it legitimacy among the fundamentalists), performative patriotism (seen in “support the troops” rhetoric, anti-protest faux rage, and of course Fox News and the mini-me clones of News Max and OAN. This has been a long time coming, we were just a bit froggy in the pan as it heated up.
You’re forgetting the importance of the Electoral College and the malapportioned Senate. Yes, there are a lot of poorly informed voters, but they’re not a majority. They have disproportionate power in our system largely because of the EC and Senate. Trump lost the PV in 2016 and 2020, and is highly likely to do so again in 2024; the only reason he has a credible chance is the EC’s bias towards rural areas means the Dem candidate has to win the PV by 4-5% to win the EC. The Senate is even worse. IOW, the playing field isn’t level, and that’s a huge part of the problem.