gracchusdixit

On a muggy Monday afternoon in September 1787, Benjamin Franklin emerged from the building in Philadelphia we now call Independence Hall.   After months of contentious deliberations, the newly created United States of America at last had a constitution.  A certain Mrs. Powell, who with a crowd of others had been waiting expectantly outside, came up to Franklin and asked:  “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?”  To which Franklin famously replied:  “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

Benjamin Franklin and his fellow founders understood full well how fragile democracy could be, because they were steeped in the lessons of classical antiquity.  They knew that the world’s first democracy, that of ancient Athens, had collapsed under the weight of its own hubristic excess.  They were all too aware that the Roman Republic, having endured for five centuries, ultimately succumbed to class conflict, civil war, and dictatorship.  In crafting the constitution of our own republic, the founders strove as best they could to guard against such perils.  

That is what led them to create a complex system of “checks and balances,” designed to fend off tyrannies of all kinds, either from oppressive popular majorities or from demagogic autocrats.  Say what you will about the ethical flaws of this system (and they are many), it has worked for the better part of 200 years, never perfectly but well enough to spare us the calamities that brought down Athenian democracy and the Roman Republic.

Until now.

Just days ago, a servile Republican majority in the United States Senate voted, with only one of its members dissenting, to “acquit” Donald Trump of the charges for which he had been impeached, despite overwhelming and undisputed evidence that he is guilty of corruptly abusing his powers as president and is certain to do so in the future.  We now face the once unthinkable reality that an out-and-out criminal occupies the oval office, one of our two major political parties is complicit in covering up his crimes, and there is nothing—absolutely nothing—that our venerable system of  “checks and balances” has been able to do about it.

However depressing this is, it comes as no surprise.  We have known for months that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, the upper echelons of the Republican Party, and an overwhelming majority of Republican voters were “all in” for Trump, not only willing but zealously determined to stand by their man, without regard for the law, the constitution, or common decency.  As the leader of the tea party caucus in Congress declared to Trump just 72 hours ago, “we have your back”.

Those millions of Americans who are struggling to cope with this almost incomprehensible calamity have been offered three consoling narratives by a legion of pundits and prognosticators: 

(1) Our country has endured and survived far worse than Donald Trump—secession and the Civil War, two World Wars and the Great Depression, political assassinations and urban riots, Vietnam and 9/11;

(2) Come November, we still have a chance to defeat Trump at the polls, exact a price for his wrongdoing, and restore our careening ship of state to an even keel before it founders on the rocks and sinks;

(3) No matter what happens in November, history will record and condemn the misdeeds of Trump and his fellow criminals, forever tarnishing their public reputations and personal legacies, with the result that future generations will look back upon them with contempt and disdain.  

As comforting as these narratives may be, they are as convincing as the soothing bedtime stories parents tell their anxious children before turning out the light.  When the harsh light of morning returns, however, reality again rears its ugly head.

While it is true that our country has weathered many storms, we have never before been buffeted by a storm like this.  Richard Nixon may have been a paranoid crook, but next to Donald Trump, he now seems almost harmless.  No president in our history has displayed a complete disregard for custom, law, and the constitution.  Never has the oval office been occupied by a totally corrupt and amoral sociopath.  Nor have we ever witnessed the nearly complete capitulation of our governing institutions to the whims of such a monster.  There is no way of turning back this clock; there is no means of repairing the damage; there is no possibility of returning to “normal”.

It may be that a majority of Americans will vote in November to reject Donald Trump and all that he stands for.  It is by no means certain, however, that their votes will be counted.  Trump was “elected” in 2016 with the connivance of Vladimir Putin.  Republicans in the Senate have now declared that he can, with impunity, do the same in 2020.  In many Republican-controlled states across the country, voter suppression and intimidation are already underway.  When election day comes, it is all but certain that votes will be hacked and manipulated.  If Trump is defeated nonetheless, there will be no one to stop him from declaring a national emergency, nullifying the election, and retaining power in perpetuity.  

Against such an outcome, the verdict of history will provide scant consolation and no defense whatsoever.  Should Trump succeed in undoing our democracy, he and his minions will be the ones writing the history.  They will be the heroes of their own story, just as their foes will be the villains.  Churchill once gibed in the House of Commons that history would prove one of his opponents to be wrong “because I shall write that history”.  And so he did.  There is no reason to think that Donald Trump, with an ego more gargantuan and grotesque even than Churchill’s, will do any less.  Illiterate dunce that he is, Trump will of course need a ghost writer, but in an autocracy populated by sycophants, ghost writers will be queuing up to do the job pro bono.

The words of warning that Benjamin Franklin uttered to Ms. Powell more than 200 years ago are tolling now, more solemnly than ever.  Lest his words become the death knell of our republic, we should, before it is too late, heed another of his warnings:  “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.  As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”  That says all you know to know, not only about Donald Trump, but about those who support him.