Warning: It Can Happen Here

Edited By
Tom Coleman

Ruth Marcus, Editorial Editor at the Washington Post, in a lead editorial in May of this year, entitled “Trump’s Quest to Dismantle Democracy” points out:

First, President Trump came for Congress. He intimidated Republican lawmakers, making them so fearful of inciting his wrath—and the wrath of his followers—that they became the subjugated branch, not an equal one.

When Democrats managed to regain control of the House of Representatives in 2018, Trump … treat[ed] it with unprecedented disdain. He ignored their requests for documents and testimony, then their subpoenas, then dispatched his lawyers to argue that they could not go to court to obtain the material.

So much for checks and balances.

Marcus continues to describe how Trump has dismantled the mechanisms put in place to hold the Chief Executive accountable in our democracy. They include:

• Undermining the independence of the intelligence community;
• Pushed out of the administration those who testified about his impeachable behavior, and,
• Removed Inspectors general, the so-called independent watchdogs entrusted with preventing fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement at government agencies.

She concludes:

Congressional Republicans are cowed. The executive branch is purged and brought to heel. The courts,–with the assiduous assistance of Senate Republicans—are stocked to the extent possible with Trump appointees. And Trump remains, ever less constrained, ever more empowered.

John Avlon is a Senior Political Analyst and anchor at CNN. He wrote an op-ed November, 17, 2019 on the CNN website that I have edited. He discusses the weakness of Republican politicians by enabling Donald Trump:

“But what should gut you as an American is that so many politicians are afraid to speak out despite the fact that they know better. They fall in line out of fear of being attacked by this President, the base or partisan media.

Somewhere in them is a glimmer of the soul that got them into politics in the first place. It’s an admiration for men like Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and John McCain, but they are living in Trump’s party now and they have sold their honor cheap. In their hearts they know that they will look back on the actions they have defended with regret.

Truth outlasts lies; character counts and expertise matters.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States 1933-1945. According to historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., FDR was apprehensive, and prescient, about the rise of fascism in Europe. He foresaw that democracy would be under threat everywhere in the world and set out on a long labor of education to change the national mind.

In his State of the Union address on January 3, 1936, FDR warned Americans against nations that are:

“… dominated by the twin spirits of autocracy and oppression…Autocracy in world affairs endangers peace…Within democratic nations the chief concern of the people is to prevent the continuance or the rise of autocratic institutions that beget slavery at home and aggression abroad.”

Three months later in accepting his renomination, he again referenced in the context of the nation’s battle against the Great Depression that America was:

“…waging a great and successful war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that: it is a war for survival of democracy.”

Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian novelist who has lived in the United States for 20 years and been a citizen for the past four.

In his lifetime he has witnessed up close the dictatorial cast of mind:

“Extreme narcissism, detachment from reality, a fondness for sycophants and a distrust of truth-tellers, an obsession with how one is publicly portrayed, a hatred of journalists and the temperament of an out-of-control bulldozer: These are some of the characteristics.

President Trump is, temperamentally, a tinpot despot of this type. But he finds himself in charge of a country that has historically thought of itself — by no means always correctly — as being on the side of liberty. So far, with the collusion of the Republican Party, he has ruled more or less unchecked. Now an election looms, and he is unpopular, and flails about looking for a winning strategy. And if that means trampling over American freedoms, then so be it.”

We are so inured to the behavior of this man, so used to his lies, his inexhaustible self-regard, his stupidity, that maybe we are tempted to think of this as just another day in Trumpistan. But this time, something different is happening.

He has threatened to use the Army against American citizens, a threat one might have expected from a leader of the former Soviet Union, but not of the United States.

In my most recent novel, “Quichotte,” I characterized the present moment as the “Age of Anything-Can-Happen.” Today I say, beware, America. Don’t believe that it can’t happen here.