Since tens of millions of otherwise normal Americans are preparing to vote for Donald Trump (or have already done so), and since it seems they have no qualms about electing a convicted criminal who has devoted his life not to public service but to himself, and since his depravity and lewdness no longer qualify as deal-breakers, let's get to the heart of this issue.
This election is not about Trump the reprobate or Trump the grifter or Trump the misogynist or racist; in fact, next Tuesday isn't about Trump at all. It's about how we will define the words America and American for the decades ahead. Will America continue to be a democracy where the people elect their officials? Will Americans continue to enjoy the Constitutional freedoms to which we have grown accustomed? Of greater importance, will the defining aspect of a democracy endure—will we retain the right to vote and to expect a peaceful transfer of power?
Let's be honest—there are dictatorships where people possess many of our freedoms and some in which people actually cast votes. But the peaceful transfer of power—the transfer at all—is not part of the deal. If you have forgotten the elections in Brazil two years ago, you might want to revisit that event. In short, Jair Bolsonaro, expecting to lose, made pre-election accusations of voting fraud, then, when he lost, ginned up the mob to overthrow the winners. He failed—like Trump two years earlier.
So it isn't freedom or the physical ability to vote that defines democracy; it's the acceptance of the will of the people. The tenuousness of all this has already shown itself in the diminishing significance of the popular vote. (Hillary Clinton's two-million-vote victory became a defeat.) But now Trump and his co-conspirators have further muddled the process by making voting more difficult and by impugning the integrity of every election worker and of the system itself. If, in the end, our legally elected choices have been bypassed to align with those of an autocratic leader or his appointees, then we no longer live in a democracy: we will have lost the defining attribute—the right to vote.
That's what January 6 was about. Trump had to know he was not going to reverse the results of the election—he had been thumped. But here we are four years later, and the majority of Republicans still believe the election was stolen. And if they lose again, we will hear the same refrain.
Now, election workers require protection, just as they would in some banana republic where fools with weapons decide who runs the country. Trump often refers to America's becoming a banana republic—just another of his racist tropes to scapegoat minorities—but in truth, figures like Donald Trump can only rule in a nation where voting is a sham and where the will of the people is subservient to the will of the dictator.
We all know that democracy is messy and often contradictory, and by its very definition and its defined privileges, has constructed a platform for people who wish to destroy it. Donald Trump, like others before him, has exploited some of these privileges to put forward his specific autocratic vision, but it's up to the majority to say he can't.
We dared to do so four years ago. I hope we can dare again...while voting remains one of our freedoms. There's no guarantee that specific freedom will endure much longer.
Comentários