Over the course of almost 250 years, American democracy has often been a raucous place, both at the level of the citizenry and elected officials. But throughout those years, despite the divisions caused in our country by racism, income inequality, and ethnic bigotry, when it came time for receiving the results of elections, they have always been respected. Majority rule has prevailed.
And despite many people, especially Blacks, having ample cause to be aggrieved by the physical, psychic, or economic violence they experienced, America has been a place of overwhelmingly peaceful coexistence, on the surface. Yes, there have been riots and protests that have resulted usually from cataclysmic events, but these disturbances generally did not result in a hardening of the divisions among us.
The centripetal force has been greater than the centrifugal force. One could be cynical and say that the centripetal force was mostly due to the aggrieved's weakness. While that was certainly a factor, I believe that the fact that people felt that we were all Americans, regardless of our backgrounds and place of origin, and that we shared a history even though it was not really ours, because we believed in the promise of America regardless how distant it was – this was the essence of the centripetal force. There was at some level a belief in the good-hearted nature of the body politic, there was hope, despite all the nastiness that was observed at an individual or even group level.
The threat to our democracy now is not coming from these traditionally aggrieved groups, the classic source of revolution, but ironically from those who have been privileged but feel threatened by the aggrieved groups.
Starting during the Reagan years, the attitude of those on the right began to harden. The sense of conviviality with their opponents, and later even civility, was lost. People became angry.
Partly it stemmed from Reagan's famous line that, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." And so the division came to be not just the traditional liberal/conservative argument about big government v small government, but government v private rights, often the de facto rights of white privilege.
The other factor was the advent of Lee Atwater and his combative, dirty tricks, form of campaigning. This was the beginning of the Republican's national embrace of the big lie, racial fear-mongering, smears and winning at all costs.
And so over the next three decades, the Republicans became obstructionists when they weren't in power because they saw that as the best way to win the next election, by making it difficult if not impossible for the Democrats to make good on their promises. Bi-partisanship was out the door, except when they were in power.
With the election of Obama, this principle reached a fever pitch. The epitome was probably Senator McConnell's not giving Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, a hearing, flouting all precedent, the excuse being a presidential election 7 1/2 months off.
The election of Obama did something else. The election of a Black President enabled the Republicans to really put fear into the hearts and minds of their base – the fear of whites losing their privileged position in American society and workplace. Now not only were legislators in Washington nasty, people on the streets became nasty.
But that was all just rehearsal for the real "show" - the election and presidency of Donald Trump. Trump was able to build on the long held-in-check fears and bigotry of many Americans – towards non-whites, be they Blacks, Hispanics, or Muslims and their distrust of government, and Evangelicals' frustration at being excluded from the halls of power and not being listened to by the larger society – and turn his base and the majority of Republicans into a mob that hates liberals and distrusts the government as an agent of liberals. He gave bigotry, distrust, and hatred legitimacy; people no longer needed to keep their voices to themselves.
The explosion of social media during this same period provided an unchecked petri dish for the expansion this animus, misinformation, and outright lies into the deepest recesses of the minds of most Republicans. That this is no longer just the state of what was thought of as Trump's core base can be seen in the fact that 75% of Republicans surveyed by PEW Research in January 2021 believed that the election of President Biden was not legitimate; they bought the Trump argument, they bought the fake news.
We have reached a point in the public arena where most Republicans will believe anything they are told by Trump, his allies, and FOX News, and will not believe anything the Democrats or the rest of the media says to the contrary. What is up is down for them; there is no objective truth. Irrationality has been mainstreamed.
This distrust has even impacted the legitimacy of government and science regarding efforts to control the pandemic. The misinformation coursing through social media regarding the vaccine is beyond bizarre, yet that is what these people believe. And when Republican leaders tell them that vaccine mandates and mask mandates are an assault on their Constitutional freedoms, they believe that too.
Trump said once during the campaign that "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters. " That unfortunately might be true. It is hard to imagine anything happening that would discredit Trump and his sycophantic allies in the eyes of their base, because all Trump has to do is label the truth "fake news" and his minions will believe him.
The latest act of hypocritical mendacity by the Republican leadership is that they are calling President Biden to task for not meeting his campaign pledge to control the virus, when it is their stand against vaccine mandates and mask mandates that has removed the only power he potentially had to control the virus. The large number of unvaccinated Americans, and thus the ongoing surges, is largely a product of their failure to support science and proven epidemiological methods.
Regardless whether Democrats manage to maintain power in the midterms and 2024, it is highly likely, given Republican gerrymandering and the situation I've described, that Congress will remain evenly and combatively divided. I fear we will have reached a situation in which the electorate, the body politic, is divided more deeply than at any time in our history, except for the Civil War.
And I can think of nothing that would turn the tide, barring a near-total turnabout by Republican elected officials. But even when Trump at some point ceases to be in the picture, and it is inevitable that that will occur, it is pretty clear that they will not lead but instead pander to their base in order to get elected. They have created a monster and it must be fed. They have no ethics and they have no shame.
It seems likely that we are struck with this dynamic until there is a generational change or some major event occurs that shakes up the status quo. How sad.
