gracchusdixit

For months, we have been pummeled with warnings by pundits and politicians, by scholars and historians, and, increasingly, by former government officials and military officers, that the upcoming presidential election will decide not merely which of the two candidates on the ballot will prevail but whether American democracy itself can be saved from the blatantly authoritarian impulses of Donald Trump. There is a good deal of truth in this warning, but not the whole truth, for there is an infinitely more consequential question on the ballot. That question is whether American democracy can be saved from itself.

Unless something dramatic occurs to change the trajectory of this election, there is every possibility that an unapologetic racist, misogynist, and fascist may not only win but also be elected democratically—that a majority of Americans, exercising their right to vote, may elect to end the very democracy that gave them that right in the first place.

As shocking this prospect is, it is not surprising, because democratic peoples have for ages exhibited a willingness, even an enthusiasm, to embrace demagogues and dictators. When Winston Churchill famously observed, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time,” he wasn’t extolling democracy, as so many seem to think. He was damning it with the faint praise of being the least-worst among a series of dreadful choices.

Churchill knew his history.

The citizens of the first democracy in the world, that of ancient Athens, readily subordinated themselves to the dictatorship of Pericles. The citizens of the first republic in the world, that of Rome, willingly surrendered their ancient freedoms to Julius Caesar and his successor, who ended the Roman Republic forever. The people of England, having deposed and beheaded a supposedly tyrannical king, promptly installed Oliver Cromwell as their “Lord Protector,” a hifalutin euphemism for dictator. From Pericles to Peròn, from Caesar to Cromwell, from Mussolini to Modi, dictators and demagogues have for centuries been elected or empowered by the citizens of supposedly democratic nations. If Adolf Hitler had deigned to hold a free and fair election, does anyone seriously doubt that an overwhelming majority of the German people would have cheerfully shouted Sieg Heil as their goose-stepped their way to the polls?

Decent, liberal-minded Americans like to think that free and fair elections inevitably lead to decent, liberal-minded results. In this, they are kidding themselves. At least half the population of the United States, which for the better part of three hundred years has congratulated itself on the purported strength of its democratic institutions and constitutional “checks and balances,” seems eager to vote for a cowardly thug who isn’t qualified to run a Seven-Eleven—a man who squandered the vast fortune handed to him by his crooked father, has filed bankruptcy half a dozen times, and has committed countless cons and crimes, not to mention being a serial adulterer, a convicted sexual abuser, and so morally depraved that he has openly fantasized about dating his own daughter. Why would millions of Americans even consider voting for such a monster?

There are at least two reasons.

The first is the stupendous ignorance of much of the electorate. When it comes to literacy, the United States ranks 36th among the nations of the world. A majority of Americans read below a sixth grade level. Fewer than half can name the three branches of government, and only one in four can name even a single branch. One in three dismiss evolution as a “theory” unsupported by facts or evidence, one in five think that the sun revolves around the earth, and almost as many believe that the earth is flat. Copernicus, Galileo, and Darwin must be rolling in their graves. At the same time, eight in ten Americans believe in miracles, seven in ten believe in angels, four in ten think that ghosts and UFOs are real phenomena, and a comparable number have convinced themselves that dinosaurs and human beings walked the earth together, even though the last dinosaur disappeared millions of years before the first human being crawled out of the antediluvian mud.

As Thomas Jefferson famously remarked: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.”

This ignorance is no accident. It is the direct result of an organized effort by political and social conservatives to keep Americans as ill-informed as possible, lest they realize how destructive the conservative agenda truly is. That is the motive animating the right-wing attack on universities, calls to privatize public education, the banning of books and the condemnation of “woke” content, and demands that prayer be mandated in classrooms and “creationism” be required in school curricula. This anti-intellectual jihad is justified in the name of “parental rights” and “religious freedom,” when, in fact, it is nothing more than an effort to keep Americans as dumb as possible—an effort that has proved to be tragically successful.

The second reason so many Americans are ready to embrace a self-absorbed sociopath like Donald Trump is that they themselves are no less self-absorbed and narcissistic than the devil they adore. It was the psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm who first recognized that, not only individuals, but entire nations and societies are susceptible to this sort of pathology. In his most influential work, “An Anatomy of Human Destructiveness,” Fromm provided this prescient diagnosis of narcissistic political figures and the narcissistic nations that embrace them:

Among political leaders a high degree of narcissism is very frequent; it may be considered an occupational illness—or asset—especially among those who owe their power to their influence over mass audiences. If the leader is convinced of his extraordinary gifts and of his mission, it will be easier to convince the large audiences who are attracted by men who appear to be so absolutely certain. But the narcissistic leader does not use his narcissistic charisma only as a means for political success; he needs success and applause for the sake of his own mental equilibrium. The idea of his greatness and infallibility is essentially based on his narcissistic grandiosity, not on his real achievements as a human being. And yet he cannot do without the narcissistic inflation because his human core—conviction, conscience, love, and faith—is not very developed. Extremely narcissistic persons are often almost forced to become famous, since otherwise they might become depressed and insane…Popular success is, as it were, their self-therapy against depression and madness. In fighting for their aims, they are really fighting for their sanity.

When, in group narcissism, the object is not the individual but the group to which he belongs, the individual can be fully aware of it, and express it without any restrictions. The assertion that “my country” (or nation, or religion) is the most wonderful, the most cultured, the most powerful, the most peace-loving, etc., does not sound crazy at all; on the contrary, it sounds like the expression of patriotism, faith, and loyalty. It also appears to be a realistic and rational value judgment because it is shared by many members of the same group. This consensus succeeds in transforming the phantasy into reality, since for most people reality is constituted by general consensus and not based on reason or critical examination.

If those words, written more than 50 years ago, do not describe the crisis we now face, I don’t know what possibly could.

To rid ourselves of the political pathology embodied by Donald Trump, we must first cure ourselves of the same disease. To proclaim incessantly, as so many at both ends of the political spectrum do, that the United States of America is “the greatest nation on earth,” a “shining city upon a hill,” and the “last, best hope of mankind,” is errant nonsense.

There is no doubt that our nation has many virtues, and I would be the last to suggest otherwise. But it also has many flaws, and it is no way “unpatriotic” to acknowledge them. On the contrary, those who truly love this country must be prepared to atone for its sins.

The origin story of our nation is riddled with theft, murder, the enslavement of millions of human beings, and the ruthless depredation of natural resources. No amount of flag-waving chauvinism and self-aggrandizing rhetoric can erase these facts. Nor can it paper over the deep-seated racial prejudices that have never been expunged from American society.

It is not only our past that plagues us, it is our present. We are drowning in guns and gun violence. We are among the most economically unequal nations in the world, with disparities between rich and poor that make many so-called “third world” countries look positively egalitarian. We fail to provide rudimentary social services—universal health care, child care, parental leave—that are taken for granted in other industrialized nations, because millions of Americans condemn such common decency as “socialism,” all the while they haven’t the slightest idea what “socialism” actually is.

Even our much-vaunted constitution, with its supposedly wise architecture of “checks and balances,” has proved to be a papier mâché construction, powerless to stop the authoritarian onslaught of Donald Trump. On the contrary, the specifically anti-democratic design of that constitution—crafted nearly 300 years by 55 white men, 25 of whom were slave-owners—has done little but to enable that onslaught.

It no longer even remotely plausible to imagine that ours is a morally “exceptional” nation, immune to the relentless vagaries of history. Our only “greatness” resides in a transitory material wealth and military power. It will not be long before this disappears and with all the “pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre”. To pretend otherwise is a narcissistic delusion.

Until and unless we confront our own political and social pathology, until we shed our delusions of grandeur and learn to live more humbly, we will never purge ourselves of the moral evil and psychological malady that Donald Trump represents. If we do not do so, the blame will be not his, it will be ours, and we will have elected the devil we deserve.