Is Democratic Renewal Possible? I Fear Not and I Hope So.

With my friends, with millions of Americans, and probably with millions more people all around the globe, I’ve been distraught about the possibility, even likelihood of a second Trump presidency.?

I don’t think I need to elaborate the reasons, other than to say he’s a liar, a cheat, a bigot, a bully, a bona fide narcissist, a proto-fascist, and a danger to us all.? And I might add: he’s a personal afront to almost all I hold dear.

Instead of focusing on Trump, which I have done for some years now, I’d like to explain why his ascendency is so heartbreaking, why I take it so personally, hoping to bring you, too, closer to the roots of your anger and disappointment.?

I was raised a believer in the American dream, passed on by my parents the way that orthodoxy and passion is passed on by religious believers.? I am the grandson of immigrants, who survived persecution and poverty and arrived in the United States of America with undying gratitude.? While they lived in poverty and my parents began in poverty, my experience began at the edge of the lower middle class and opened astonishing opportunities to me.? My personal story was virtually identical to the most idealistic version of America taught in the history books of the 1950’s.?

To succeed, I simply had to aim high and work hard.? My life was what my parents and grandparents had worked for.??

As a child and young adult, I listened endlessly to Paul Robeson singing the Ballad for America, an idealized version of people of all races, religions, and classes coming together to realize, to concretize America’s highest ideals, “That all men are created with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”? Abraham Lincoln, then FDR were like gods in my home, and following their example was our ideal.?

I prospered and passed on my advantages to my children, who passed them on to their children, my grandchildren.? I came to believe that my prosperous path could be open to all, if only we cleared the way.? And clearing the way—through education, health care, nutrition, and the like—was the core, the essential role of society and its political systems.?

I knew that there might be setbacks to that historical arc aiming for justice.? I think of the Great Depression, McCarthyism, and our efforts to dominate weaker countries, from Peru to the Philippines to Vietnam. ?But, because of our essential creed, which I took to be the American DNA, we would right the ship and resume our progressive, upward path. And, to an extent that’s what seemed to have been happening, with the march of civil rights for people of color, for women, for gay and lesbian people, the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid, and the continued flow of immigrants to revel in their new privileges and freedoms, and to boost our economy.

To an extent, though not nearly enough of an extent, I made this American creed my life’s work: working to expand justice, freedom, and opportunity to others.? I believed—and I would dearly love to still believe—that, given the proper opportunity, others could do as I have done.? Progress towards that end would be our defining quality.?

I have always seen Republican politics, aiming to benefit the rich over the poor, as a roadblock to this Progressive dream.? And over the last few decades, Republican opposition to what has seemed progressive seems to have grown far more passionate and, therefore, to me, more toxic.?

What I didn’t see coming was the rapid acceleration of American protectionism and isolationism, Christian Nationalism—all the ways that right wing Americans have pulled in.? All the ways that Americans have grown fearful about the rest of the world.

It’s as though we have passed into another stage of national development: from an Enlightenment-driven to a Hobbesian world.? During the same period that Rousseau and Locke pointed the way to individual freedom and democratic societies, Thomas Hobbes famously said that “life is nasty, brutish, and short.”? In his world, people so fear attack by their neighbors that they attack first.? And to rule that world, there was a dire need for an all-powerful dictator, what Hobbes called Leviathan.? For empires, like Rome, that required a constantly expanding domination.

And that has seemed like the contemporary American course during the last few decades.? Our post World War II effort to protect free societies from the Soviet Union and China, among others, has turned into an empire that has defensively expanded its boundaries and rigidified its notions about who the enemy is.? This is among the essential qualities of late empires.? And I fear that we have been becoming that kind of civilization.? ??

And Donald Trump, with his rabid cult following is very much the embodiment of late empire leadership.?

That is what I fear: that we are making a full transition from a “light unto the world” into a defensive and domineering late empire led by a brutal clown, a xenophobe, a tyrant, spurning, not welcoming the stranger.? When you observe Trump rallies, they look like the assault by gladiators and lions on Christians in the Coliseum.? In place of idealism, there is fear, turning those who are different into enemies—turning me into an enemy.? Turning his followers, his cult, into a mindless herd.

I am trying take the Maga movement as a great political danger, not yet an ineluctable movement towards the destruction of the American dream and the American empire.?

It represents a threat to everything my life has been based on.? As I imagine a second Trump presidency, I feel like a religious person, a believer, losing his god.? The possibility of a Trump victory, leaves me feeling deserted and lost.? Caught in someone else’s dream—or nightmare.?

I can only hope that we gather sufficient strength to beat it back, that Kamala Harris proves to be a strong and inspiring leader, that we can renew our vows to a democratic and progressive republic.? In very small ways, I’ll be trying to help.?