How history will record the leadership exhibited by Donald Trump and his Republican Party is yet to be determined. Bill Barr gave his own rendering of a well-worn phrase on the subject in his hearing before the U.S. Senate as recently as this past May:
“Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”
If so, it will be written about Trump & Co. by others. For those of us who have lived through it, it is rather clear that leadership has been the bastard child of the current crop of Republicans. To be sure, this period of our history will be written by its survivors.
“Leadersheep”
It is not enough to characterize the current state of leadership as simply being weak or lacking. Headlines during the weeks after the election loss of Donald Trump have noted that on the major issue of the day, the COVID 19 pandemic, his reaction has been to ignore it. At a time when Americans are facing the effects and after-effects of the virus, their president could not care less about them. Unemployment. virus-induced poverty and hunger, business losses, and threats of evictions swirl around us while Trump is a derelict in office. Republican Senators are derelict in their failure to pass meaningful assistance to help their constituents through this trying time. What is wrong with them?
We are witnessing not simply a lack of leadership, but it’s adverse---an active choice to avoid leading. As we are now closing in on the end of his presidency, we are witnessing its illogically appropriate conclusion---an attempted coup. Pundits and diarist on this very site have waxed on and on about the impact Trump’s base has had on our politics during his run as emperor-of-the-world wannabe. It is in recognition of their value to him, often at the expense of other Republicans, and the manipulation of their varied and self-indulgent grievances that tell another story about what the flipside of leadership looks like.
I think what we are now experiencing at the end of the Trump presidency is an implosion of leadership. Like a Stephen Hawking’s black hole, Trump attracts all those in his orbit and draws them into his imploding star. They, for their turn, happily attach themselves to his dying star. Both he and his base of supporters hope to use the other for their personal needs, their own petty slights and resentments. The attraction is mutual. Like the flotsam in space that is captured then engulfed by a gravitational pull, they are bound by their hatreds, soon to be engulfed by them:
The most well-understood black holes are created when a massive star reaches the end of its life and implodes, collapsing in on itself.
A black hole takes up zero space, but does have mass — originally, most of the mass that used to be a star. And black holes get “bigger” (technically, more massive) as they consume matter near them. The bigger they are, the larger a zone of “no return” they have, where anything entering their territory is irrevocably lost to the black hole.
Imploding star? A mass that used to be a star? A zone of “no return”? A black hole can be thought of as a galactic defect with a malevolent vacuum at its center. In our current state the leadership model at the seat of power in Washington is analogous--- the incapacity to lead, an inability to care, decaying impotence that greedily takes no prisoners on its way out. It is the matter of which a “cult leader” is composed. The most ardent followers rarely survive the death of a cult. To torture a phrase, in most instances, their misery needs company. Looking back on this time in our nation’s history, it will be with a bewildered recognition that this rot in the center of our body politic didn’t begin with Donald Trump. The grievances heaped upon a bed of unfulfilled promises are the embers of the still unresolved issues of our founding. Our first leaders were men of their times and their decision to build a democracy on the backs of an enslaved workforce proved both short-sighted and self-serving, Their convenient blindspot helped enrich many of them. They mistook privilege for liberty and freedom. We remain strapped by their judgment that white men with property defined the class of those “who are created equal.”
Dancing with the Angels
We are men and women of our time and so we are burdened with the knowledge of their error---we know better. In a turn of modern sorcery, however, we have acted as if equality was a gift that could be slow-walked into modernity. Their failures to implement true equality for all citizens regardless of circumstance or status are preserved in Trump’s attacks on minority voting precincts, Republican voter suppression efforts, and their muting of women’s and gay rights. It is what allows cover to a draconian immigration policy that separates families, houses children in cages, and denies asylum to the oppressed. As Elijah Cummings famously stated about our legacy when our time comes:
Let us make sure that this time we get it right before the dance. Let this implosion of decency, honor, and empathy be the start of our reckoning with our past.
The next few weeks, it seems, will be filled with much pain and suffering. Donald Trump’s total disregard for leadership during this time of pandemic and economic devastation reminds us of the wages of our original sin. This pain and suffering have proven to be truly democratic in its reach and impact. The uncertainty of the moment is not unlike that at our nation’s birth. The question was then and is now, can we survive? Is this our time to reimagine our course, ensuring that this time our freedoms are not stillborn by privilege, caste, or station--by gender or ethnicity? Can restoration of leadership usher in a new day that measures immigrants not for what they take from us but what they offer us? As a nation of immigrants, denying them is a failure to recognize our own past. We choose this course at our own future peril.
When the history of our time is finally written, the victors and losers will have passed on. It is left to our children and theirs to offer a chance for redemption. In our time, and for times to follow, we should pass on a warning that in a democracy, leadership is a shared responsibility that falls to all of us. That in the end, before it it is written, before its initial draft, with the outcome is still in doubt, history is made by those who live in the present, come to terms with the past, and plan for a more perfect future.