Now
It’s easy to lose hope. The dark future is today: National Guard in the streets, ICE squad roundups based on accent and color. Many afraid to speak; they fear retribution. Neighbors spying on neighbors, encouraged to “tell” any slip from the orthodoxy of the “party line” – just text JD Vance. Conversations stilted; not knowing who’s on “the other” side. Families riven apart, unable to agree even on the simplest facts.
The powerfully mixed potion of politics and religion, make it nearly impossible to reason or discuss. If the Party is also the Church, disagreement is no longer a political difference to settle with a handshake and an “agree to disagree”. Instead, it’s heresy, a mortal sin against the Lord. How can there be any recourse or recovery from that?
Opposition oppressed, not by law, but by economic coercion. Sure, you can say what you want, exercise your First Amendment right, but if it crosses the “invisible line”, you might lose your job, your position in the community. You might be willing to “stand” for your beliefs, but will your employer accept the risk of having you on the payroll? What government approvals or contracts will the company lose by employing you? Ask Kimmel and Colbert.
1984 Revisited
What happened to the Voltarian quote: “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”? It was a fundamental block of our democracy. But now, Voltaire is lost to polarization. Today, it’s more, “If I disagree with what you say, you are cast from my life, my neighborhood, and my community”. That’s happening: the red states grow redder by the day, and the blue states even bluer. Folks search for the comfort of “their own kind”. We used to call that “de-facto segregation”, but instead of race, now it’s by political ideology.
This is not a dystopian novel, “1984 Revisited”. This is our world, right now, here in the United States of America. The rest of the world was aghast at first, but quickly adapted to the needs of the moment. The current President is lauded with praise and gifts. And more: if there’s something in the deal to financially benefit the new President; even better. The graft is in the open, as is the criminality.
Of course, he is a man with prior immunity, “forgiven of his trespasses” by both the Courts and his followers. Does Trump sound like a President, or more like a gangster? Is he making peace in the Middle East, or simply taking from them an “offer he won’t refuse”, more bitcoins in the pocket? It’s hard to tell.
Helpless
And “my side”, the Democratic side (both party and belief), seems helpless. We are doomed to frustrated protests and interminable law suits. We are in, what the military calls, a holding action at best, or a defended retreat at worst. Even if we can hold, for the two years until we can change Congress, and the two years from there to the Presidency, will America ever be the same? I suspect not. We are living a nightmare now, even awake in the future the memories will still be strong.
And worse, there’s an insidious threat, looming in the background. Will we still have fair and free elections? At each turn the rules are changed to benefit the other side. Will we ever again trust the count, the outcome, the promises of honesty and fairness?
So Why fight?
Gary Kasparov was a Russian Grandmaster chess player. As he ended his chess career, he moved onto politics, and was a driving force in the brief flash of Russia’s democracy in the 1990’s. It was shut down by the forces that evolved into Russia’s oligarchy today, governed with an iron fist by Vladimir Putin; opposition pushed out the window or injected with Novachuk. Kasparov was forced into exile.
Kasparov delineates all of the familiar signs of authoritarianism he sees in the United States today. He travelled that road before, from the light of freedom to a new darkness of control. But Kasparov has one proviso, one glimmer of hope for American democracy. He noted that the Russian people were steeped in authoritarianism, from the Czars to the Soviet Politburo to Putin’s regime. There was no experience, no shared strength learned by real democracy in action.
American Fools
With all its flaws, the memory of freedom is strong in America. We have nearly 250 years of making our Nation “more perfect”, striving for a goal never realized. In this moment when we see the real risk of losing democracy, we have one advantage over Russia, Hungary, Venezuela, even Italy or Poland. Democracy is in our DNA – from the original Declaration of Independence on. Even our greatest crisis, the Civil War, was ultimately fought for freedom.
Things are bad, but it’s not over. Stand for Democracy. Stand for the United States of America. Maybe Lincoln said it best: “You can fool some of the people, all of the time, and all of the people, some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people, all the time”. Many Americans may be dazzled by the present regime, but we all are not fools. The fight is now, and democracy will win. Americans will not be fools forever. But, we must maintain the fight until they wake up.
As Tom Bodett might say; “We’ll leave the light on”.
