I am seeing a lot of posts from friends and articles written for the left that are essentially declaring us a failed state and that our democracy is over. Donald Trump is a Tyrant and we can't rescue the system, seems to be the gist of these posts and articles.
While I understand the despair from whence this comes and I DO NOT want us to fail to realize the seriousness of the danger we are in, because we are in the balance and close to falling into authoritarianism, we haven't lost yet. We are not yet in a failed state.
Donald Trump has all of the characteristics of a tyrant and is causing constitutional crises (plural). But we have not yet lost and that is important because if we believe that we have, prematurely, it hands him the victory.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
We are not in a failed state...yet. May it never be so.
It took a while for Nixon
to get ousted and, although it looks and is really bad (worse than Nixon)
things are moving in that direction. It was always political pressure that did
it. The reigning party must be more afraid of the voters than anything else. Of
course, we have terrible gerrymandering and this is all desperately
dangerous...I am in NO WAY trying to get us to think we are safer than we are,
but we also need to avoid freezing in despair and proclaiming it to be
over....or being too fast to throw our system overboard - although we clearly
see places where it has to be strengthened.
Trump has the lowest
approval ratings of any President at this point in time. We have a
couple of gerrymandering cases that could dramatically change things in
2018. We have some of the biggest enemies in Congress and in
government who are weakened. The courts are upholding the
constitution.
Yes…there are really
horrible things happening and McConnell has done more to undermine our
democracy than virtually anyone in our history. But just because he
and his cronies have blocked a special prosecutor and independent commission
right now, doesn’t mean that this is over. First of all…did people
really think he was just going to turn around and do it? If so, you
had different expectations than me. I expect us to have to put
pressure on EVERY DAY for six months at minimum to get it. If we do
it and do it right, we will destroy McConnell in the process…which is a worthy
goal because he has shown himself to be quite willing to re-write the rules for
his own success regardless of their impact on generations to
come. He is unworthy of office. We need to make this as
much about him as about Trump. I am going on the assumption that he
may be implicated.
McConnell and Sessions
need to be as strongly targeted as Trump. There is reason to believe
that they may be implicated. We know Sessions lied under oath about
Russia. He is supposed to recuse himself and has not.
So, when do we give
up? When do we proclaim that our democracy is over and it is no
longer worth trying to fight for the system? (And I believe it is
important for us to fight for our system both to prove to ourselves it can work
and to prove to the world…we are the oldest democratic system standing…we owe
it to the world to try with everything we have to make it
survive. And all of you radicals who want socialism or some
such? The dangers from a GOVERNMENTAL perspective are the same, so
we have to survive to prove it is possible).
These are the four things
I am looking for:
- 1. Trump suspends the government
for some sort of emergency (a Reichstag fire) and is not immediately
deposed.
- 2. The 2018 elections fail to
meet the standard for fair and free elections (and with voter
suppression…we are more dangerously close there than most of our citizens
realize).
- 3. The courts block Trump and
he refuses to abide by their ruling, using the executive branch power to
ignore them. If he is not virtually immediately removed…we are
a failed state.
- 4. He orders our military to act against our
citizens and is obeyed.
But, again, I would expect
us to have to scream CONSISTENTLY about the need for a special prosecutor and
to start implicating McConnell and Sessions for six months or so to get
action. Part of our problem is that these four months have felt like
a decade and people are tiring out and giving up. That is what they
are expecting. We have to remain focused.
And then, when we win,
we’ve got to very seriously revisit our form of government and see how to
strengthen the protections. Unfortunately, in any system, a huge
amount of it is always upheld by societal norms. Society is always a
compact. It just always is. And our system is grossly
imperfect and there are things we can do to tweak it. But the
biggest problem is that any democratic form of government is prone to what we
are currently facing because people can be ignorant, hateful, tribal, and
downright stupid. That’s a human condition problem. There
are other forms of government that would theoretically be better, (the old
meaning of aristocracy means rule by the best…which is not supposed to be
hereditary, oligarchy just claims that you are ruling according to who has the
most wealth which is usually hereditary, but can let new wealth in) but they
tend to degenerate rapidly into rule by hereditary lineage. The
dangers of socialism as a form of government are essentially the same as a
democracy.
Until we all manage to
achieve enlightenment…some form of democracy is probably best for
us.
My conclusions.
- We are in real, serious danger…do
not forget that and resist with everything you have got.
- We are not yet
in a failed state, so don’t give up in despair and it is not yet time to
chuck the system. That hands the victory to the enemies of
Democracy – which includes Trump, it includes the oligarch funders of the
GOP, and it includes the oligarchs in Russia. Don’t do it.
- We need to
scream EVERY DAY for the next six months at minimum for a special
prosecutor and special independent bi-partisan commission to investigate
whether there was collusion with the Trump campaign and Russia and whether
there IS a cover-up or continued collusion. Don’t let the
narrative wander (the media will let it wander if they don’t think it will
sell).
- McConnell and
Sessions are working to block a reasonable investigation – we very
publicly ask the questions about whether they are implicated.
- Work very hard
beginning now on 2018. And this is about the survival of our
democracy. We must elect people who will be willing to stand up
to the executive branch, if necessary…even against their own
party. Frankly, if this was a Democrat doing the same, we need
to be willing to be as vigilant and outraged. It is unlikely to
be since Democrats tend to work for the system and the GOP has been trying
to undermine it since the oligarchs have gotten control of their party…but
our loyalty should be to the system, not the party.
- Anything that
starts to slide on any of the four pathways to a failed state…we have got
to be immediately up in arms.
- We have to fight
with everything we’ve got against suppression of the free press.
There are a lot of issues. Tons of them…overwhelming us
and overwhelming the narrative so that we don’t stay focused. But
the Russia issue, we need to get to the bottom of it. At this point, if
we don't want to lose our form of government entirely and end up in civil war,
we focus on protecting the Constitution...just like every government employee,
including every member of the military, has sworn to do. May
the oath breakers be held to account.
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