The Decline of American Democracy

 a retrospective

 

     Trump’s election clearly threatens the end of American democracy.  In spite of all its limitations and failures, in spite of racism, exploitation, and imperialism, this country had, at least up to this point, avoided military takeover and fascist dictatorship.  There will be for the next four years a leader who admires tyranny and cares for nothing but his own power.  Immigrants, gays, and those who lack what Trump called his “beautiful white skin” will suffer in particular, as will all the poor.  In fact the great majority of Americans lost last night.  All women and all workers will find their rights restricted and their options narrowed.  Everyone will suffer, in fact, except a few billionaires.  The voices of scientists regarding climate change and vaccines will go unheard while charlatans and know-nothings govern policy.  Knowledgeable foreign policy experts will be replaced by hacks.  Politically neutral civil servants will lose their jobs to the toadies in a return to the long-discredited spoils system.

     During the Lyndon Johnson administration I and others felt that the Republican Party was all but obsolete.  Democrats had held the White House for a generation with the exception of the two terms of the basically non-political war hero Dwight Eisenhower.  The New Deal brought together big city residents and many rural working people into a consensus that recognized the positive role of government in social problem-solving.  The business tycoons who had always powered the G. O. P. found through necessity that most Democratic politicians were equally willing to accommodate their wishes, and progressives began  to condemn what was called corporate liberalism.  Both parties followed the old Cold War assumptions in world affairs, with Democrats sometimes feeling they had to be even more anti-Communist just to prove their Americanism. 

     The critical change in the American political balance of power during that period was Johnson’s reluctant acceptance of the cause of civil rights, the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the shift in the South, on purely racist grounds, from wholly Democratic territory to solid Republican, after a transitional pause to embrace George Wallace.  The loss of the Deep South, combined with the disaffection of those who opposed the war and felt outrage after the brutal repression in Chicago that summer, was enough to elect Richard Nixon, whom everyone knew to be a shifty character.  The Tet Offensive led many to think the conduct of the war by the U. S. should be even more violent.  We now know that Nixon while only a candidate was secretly interfering with peace talks to heighten his own political chances.  Yet even Nixon, though, while personally corrupt, supported the Equal Rights Amendment, the Environmental Protection Act, and a sort of national health system, placing him far to the left of his party today. 

     The formation of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority placed evangelical Christians in the service of conservatism (in spite of Christ’s criticism of the wealthy and sympathy for the poor and outcast) and then the seizure of the American embassy in Teheran in 1979 inspired a moralistic nationalism that ousted Carter and found a leader in Ronald Reagan whose career as a movie star boosted his support among the poorly-educated.   His terms allowed him to crush the air traffic controllers’ union PATCO, cut taxes for the wealthy, senselessly invade Grenada, illegally aid the contras in Nicaragua, and appoint political activists to the Supreme Court.

     Though Clinton had largely maintained center right policies and had managed to run the government with historic surpluses, the scandal of his affair with Monica Lewinsky tainted the end of his administration and then Nader’s campaign (assisted by the Republican Leadership Council) and, in the end, a decision from the politicized Supreme Court assisted Bush Jr. into office.  (He and Reagan were surely the most intellectually lightweight of modern presidents until the astonishing incapacity of Trump.)  Bush appointed more highly partisan Supreme Court justices, leading to the egregious Citizens United decision in 2010 which allowed big money even more of a say in American elections.

     And finally, the stage was set for Trump, with his phony reputation as a successful businessman, his widespread popularity as a television personality, and his willingness to be overt about his prejudices.  He provided scapegoats for many working-class white voters who had genuine economic anxieties and grievances.  Racism, sexism, and nativism gave them someone to blame, and old ideas of machismo led many to admire behavior that was simply rude. 

     What revived the Republican Party after it had seemed in my youth to be waning was a combination of the old corporate wealth, always unsatisfied, with moralistic Christians, many of modest means, old-fashioned male chauvinists, and ultra-nationalists.  Trump’s contempt for women and for other races unfortunately but undeniably held an appeal for just over half of America’s voters.  Now we are stuck with Trump for another four years, a man who unashamedly promotes himself, insults women, immigrants, and the handicapped, and who looks out for nobody but a few ultra-rich friends.  Perhaps his worst characteristic is his erratic decision-making, based on impulse and whim and without regard for advice or precedents.  There is, it is sad to say, no telling what the man will do.  This country’s recovery from the 2024 election will be long and hard, if it can occur at all.