Pretty remarkably resilient, in my view. Oh, it’s under dire threat. But, as I see it, many of the indications people cite as evidence of the democracy collapsing—notably the absence of impeachment—actually testify to its stubborn resilience. No, really. Hear me out.
The still above is from a silly spaghetti Western named They Call Me Trinity. When I think of the American electorate, I think of a scene in that film. Bud Spencer, the large actor in the still, is disguised as a monk. Assuming that this fat monk must be soft and weak, a loutish villain nonchalantly reaches out to shove him out of the way. He casually shoves Spencer’s shoulder. Spencer doesn’t move an inch and the guy sprawls awkwardly. Getting angry, he pushes with more determination. Again, he falls off as if pushing an enormous boulder. Soon, he discovers just how tough Spencer’s character is. But the image I remember from seeing the film in the ‘70s is the mute, passionless, elemental immobility of a human presence untouchable by vain malice. To me, that’s the American democracy in the Age of Trump.
Look, I see what you see. The oligarchy cannot possibly succeed in a democracy in which a diverse populace can readily vote and have its votes counted fairly. Its minions are actively and arrogantly dismantling democracy wherever they can get away with it. They suppress the vote in any state they can control. They have stacked the courts and corrupted the Supreme Court. They have disdainfully blown through legislative customs and deeply corrupted the Department of Justice. They have … hell, you know what they have done. They’ve done a helluva lot of damage to our democratic institutions.
And I won’t pretend for one moment that this isn’t a dangerous moment. They have gone all in, and if they can consolidate their control, they will in short order dismantle our system permanently. Every time some new outrage reaches a previously un-breached level of despotism, people sound the alarm—there goes another level of our democracy.
These folks, many of whom post here, are perfectly right about the threat. However, I think they are missing something pretty fundamental. Our democracy abides. In some ways, I think it is strengthening.
Let’s look at the issue of impeachment. And for the record, I want Trump impeached, indicted, tried, convicted, and jailed. Just as much as any of you. Nor do I want to get into the whole tactical matter of whether the Dems should formally impeach him or not. I think that’s a tough choice, I can see both arguments, and I respect those on both sides of the issue.
I want to look at the impeachment issue from a different viewpoint. What do the dynamics tell us about America? About our democracy? About us in the Resistance?
Always remember this: impeachment isn’t about justice, morality, or the law. Your instinct for justice may want it to be, but it isn’t. It is a purely political process. And it is certainly telling that one of our 2 major parties has wholly repudiated its responsibility to the long-standing American consensus about law and order, sketchy as that has been. Score 1 for the would-be dismantlers of democracy.
But what does it mean that, in general, the American people aren’t worked up enough to demand impeachment? This is where my reading differs quite a bit from conventional wisdom. I think that, if you understand the dynamic, the remoteness of an impeachment possibility shows us how hard it will be to dismantle the American people’s commitment to our system.
To see this, you have to understand that it is a deep-structural, largely subconscious commitment. Americans think this and that, hold this value and its opposite, and contradict themselves all the time. They betray their ideals and often fail to see how freedoms aren’t real unless they are extended to “those people” who scare them. Their partisanship is both deep-running and profoundly fickle.
But deep below their awareness, they rest on an absolute democratic structure: the election cycle. They know one thing: elections come along every 2 years in November, and if you win, you take and enjoy the privilege of office.
Of course, the system does have the provision of impeachment. But the whole idea of impeachment clashes with the deepest political conviction Americans hold: elections come along every 2 years in November. Americans’ political thoughts, values, habits, and actions are all aligned to that election cycle. To suggest a process that sets those results aside creates a serious cognitive dissonance that most Americans perceive as a profound threat to the nation’s democracy. They see this as a more fundamental, STRUCTURAL threat to the democratic system: You lost? OK. You get another chance in 2-6 years. In the meantime, live with the results of the election. To this perspective, impeachment challenges the democracy more fundamentally than the temporary and reversible damage of a corrupt term of office.
Remember—this is not my view. I want Trump impeached, indicted, tried, convicted, and jailed. I believe that our democracy would be strengthened by doing so.
However, I do see the value of this perspective, even during the time of Trump. Americans don’t want impeachment. But, their reason for this value is rooted in their profound and largely unexamined commitment to election cycles, the results of which will be held to be valid.
Consider the historical comparison. Hitler was elected to office and immediately set about dismantling the Weimar Republic. As we all know, Trump’s parallel aspirations are eerie and disturbing. But the difference is enormous. The Weimar Republic was only a decade old, imposed by the hated victors of an incalculably costly war. The racism of the German people—no worse than out own—was lodged in a homogeneous population. As soon as Hitler began challenging the fledgling democracy, it collapsed like a Lego fortress.
So Trump takes office and sets out to follow Hitler’s lead. And he has been successful insofar as the institutional framework has allowed him to be. In some areas, the damage has been bad, but, in part because he lacks Hitler’s tactical shrewdness, remarkably limited. Many of his executive actions have been disrupted or halted by the courts. Despite the assistance of Putin and the collusion of American racists, he lost the mid-terms badly, and then he had to live with the results. If you think about it, he and the GOP Congress have accomplished very little.
And the key point is this. The people have not arisen. The same electorate that doesn’t really want impeachment has also easily resisted any serious disruption of the election cycle. The movement led by Trump needs fundamental disruption of the structures determined by elections, and the likes of Bannon have reached for more. But, like Bud Spencer in the film, the people stood there as this sorry, incompetent band of Keystone Crooks reached out to push them aside. And the people haven’t moved.
The American people don’t want impeachment because it violates their deep-structural orientation to the election cycle. They are equally disinterested in any suggestion that that structure can be disrupted or set aside by corrupt racists currently playing out their pathetic terms of office.
The American democracy is structurally sound. Believe it or not, resistance to impeachment testifies to that, much as we would like to drive Trump from office and into prison, like, 3 years ago.
Now, please don’t think I am promising you glory. I don’t know what will happen. And the threats are real. I think it is abundantly clear that the GOP has not consolidated the corruption it is reaching for. But, if, in 2020, they keep the White House, the Senate, and their death grip on currently red states, they may begin to do that. Eventually, you would think that they would turn up a competent despot, and our democracy can’t hold out forever against an onslaught of tyranny.
What I am saying is that, right now, our democracy is hanging in there, structurally sound and showing a lot of signs of emerging sanity. Hell, just read the Good News folks each morning. (I do.)
The American people’s grounding in democratic institutions has a lot of resilience in its tank. Right now, at least, our democracy abides.