Activating before the storm: Essential thinking – and reading – for the onslaught of Trump

These are eerie, deeply disquieting days for the republic.

Many of us are incredulous that our fellow citizens cast votes for a felon and a coup artist. We have elected a despot whose contempt for fair elections and the rule of law yields only when the electoral outcome benefits him personally.?The charlatan’s team of varied extremists and incompetents mock the notion of the public good and foreshadow a desperate era ahead.

But this moment must and will pass, very soon.

“The desire to turn inward is understandable, and human,” writes Miriam Elder in a column entitled Don’t Let Donald Trump Drive You Into Exile. “But it’s a form of self-protection. It’s also a delusion … You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you,” she cautions aphoristically.

Nancy MacLean, the Duke political science professor whose book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America to presage what we are witnessing, sees advocates of democracy who are disheartened and anxious, but also poised for action, as if “awaiting deployment,” in the service of the rule of law, ethics, and good, open, and competent government.

As for me and the Kübler-Ross grief process, I am furious still (stage 1), accepting (stage 5) -- and energized.? (I seem to have hastened through stages 2 through 4.)

In a newsletter, Ben Radersdorf of Project Democracy writes:? “As chaotic as things feel now, I can promise it’s going to feel more so after January. This may be a good time to pay less attention to the information firehose and more to the big picture.”

To encourage a broader perspective, Radersdorf offers a useful list of “what to read before the storm”-- books to greet another Trump term.

I’ve borrowed Radersdorf’s worthy idea, added and substituted some titles, and offer below my reading list for patriots dedicated to the Constitution and our foremost national democratic ideals.

“A Democracy … if you can keep it” -- as Benjamin Franklin saw our challenge -- necessitates that we question, learn, and motivate.?

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY TODAY

Democracy More or Less: America’s Political Reform Quandary by Bruce Cain (2014).? A professor of political science at Stanford, Cain argues that American political reforms so often fail because of an unrealistic civic ideal of a fully engaged citizenry and a neglect of basic pluralist principles. He traces the tension between populist and pluralist approaches and explains why political primaries have promoted partisan polarization, why voting rates are declining even as election opportunities increase, and why direct democracy is not a sound grassroots tool. Cain offers a practical reform agenda based on pluralist ideals

Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson (2024). Since 2019, Richardson, a Boston College history professor, has gained a wide audience for?Letters from an American, her daily newsletter on “current history.” ?Her book examines the historical forces that have led to the current political climate, how principals of the American and the Constitution have been corrupted, showing how modern conservatism has preyed upon a disaffected population, weaponizing language and promoting false history to consolidate power. She reminds us that democracy requires constant vigilance and participation from all of us.

Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point by?Steven Levitsky?and?Daniel Ziblatt?(2023).? Change in a multiracial democracy has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. The Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and The United States lags dangerously behind.? Harvard professors Levitsky and Ziblatt call urgently for reform of our politics we have remade our country before—most notably, after the Civil War and during the Progressive Era.

HISTORY OF OUR DEMOCRACY

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America by Keisha Blain (2022).? If you find yourself struggling with making an impact today, this is a great book for you. Hamer, the civil rights activist who used spiritual hymns and resilience to lead the civil rights movement for black women in Mississippi, organized Mississippi’s Freedom Summer and represented the break-away Democratic Freedom Party at the 1964 Democratic Convention.? Hammer was extorted, threatened, harassed, shot at, and assaulted while helping and encouraging thousands of African Americans to become registered voters.

The Creation of the American Republic,?by Gordon Wood (1969). The process of constitutional invention took off in 1776 when Americans declared our independence. As the colonies became states, governments were created anew replacing colonial charters. Wood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at Brown, shows that there was this rich body of experimentation occurring in the states. He identifies, traces and explains all the changes – some gradual, some significant – that took place in American constitutional thinking before and during the writing of the federal constitution in 1787.

The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861,?by David Potter (1977).? This compelling, dramatic account of the most polarized and politically fraught moment in American history remains the authoritative account of the sequence of events leading up to the Civil War. ?For people living through what may just be the second-most polarized moment, these are events worth studying. The late David Potter, a history scholar at Yale And Stanford, won a Pulitzer Prize for this book.?

The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth (2004).? This novel is an alternative history in which President Franklin Roosevelt is defeated by isolationist Charles Lindbergh in 1940 (FDR was re-elected to a third term). In the Lindbergh presidency, the Roth family witnesses the normalization of antisemitism and persecution of Jewish Americans like themselves. The narrator and central character is young Philip, and the novel follows both his coming of age and terrifying American politics.???

RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM

Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert Paxton (2004).? From the former Columbia scholar who authored the definitive Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, this similarly landmark work?has made a lasting impact on our understanding of modern Europe. From the first violent uniformed bands beating up “enemies of the state,” through Mussolini’s rise to power, to Germany’s radicalization in World War II, Paxton WHO. WHO. shows clearly why fascists came to power when and where they did and explores whether fascism could exist outside the early-twentieth-century European setting in which it emerged.?

Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich, by Peter Fritzsche (2017).? A historian at the University of Illinois, Fritzsche shows how Hitler and the National Socialists wasted little time after he was appointed chancellor in 1933, crushing what remained of the Weimar Republic and installing “the 20th century’s most popular dictatorship.” This book offers a sobering look at just how quickly things can slip from unimaginable to unassailable. ?Germany’s conservatives were confident they could use Hitler to their advantage.

The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of authoritarianism, by Anne Applebaum (2021) ?Why are elites in democracies globally turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism? Liberal democracy is under siege. Pulitzer Prize-winner Applebaum raises an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalistic autocracy. In this captivating work, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else.

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