Near the end of “Chinatown,” detective Jake Gittes confronts LA powerbroker Noah Cross, having learned he raped his own daughter and murdered his business partner for lust and power. Cross responds with perhaps one of the truest lines in film and literature:
“I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and right place, they're capable of anything.”
President Donald Trump had met that moment between the “right time and right place” often in his life and from all accounts chose the worst of himself. As the loser of the 2020 election, he has stayed true to form.
Unfortunately, senior congressional Republicans have chosen to follow him in this post-election miasma of claiming, without an iota of evidence, widespread election fraud and criminal behavior by Democratic candidates and Republican officials who, in their moment between the “right time and right place,” chose to carry out their sworn duties without partisan influence.
To avoid Trump’s wrath while he thrashes about trying to burn down the house of democracy and they cling tenuously to power in the Senate, Republicans – led by Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy – are providing the matches.
As writer Anne Applebaum so aptly described in a recent piece in The Atlantic, they are collaborating with Trump and Trumpism, much in the way the Vichy French collaborated with their Nazi occupiers. That’s a hard truth for Americans who believe their country is better than this, and it is, but right now, it isn’t, and that is dangerous.
Democracy is a shared experience, difficult as that may be for some to conceive, that requires informed, committed voters, finding ways to give small donations (dollars or time) to preferred cause or candidate, participating in the community, as volunteer or elected official.
Moreover, it requires the maturity to accept an election loss, give the winner a chance, and work to fight another day, not with lies and character assassination, but with ideas that would appeal to enough people to win an election.
It seems rather simple, but that is what our democracy is all about; people governing themselves by choosing elected officials, from president to local tax collector, to provide representation, vision and leadership for an equitable society that provides for everyone, not just the select few.
That may not have been exactly what the founding fathers imagined 244 years ago, but they knowingly left a document with such broad concepts as to allow future American generations to re-imagine the American experience in order to ensure the true meaning of justice for all.
For four trying years, that hard fought-for system, imperfect as it seems, was torn apart by forces bent toward fascism. In 2016, the nation heard Trump’s call that “I alone” could address the problems of America. It was his “right time and right place” moment; the political system had been in gridlock for eight years, technology brought the seemingly chaotic world into our smart phones. Change, good and bad, was upturning life as many people, particularly white people, once knew it. Fear and anger in the country was palatable.
Trump chose the strongman rule, and nearly half of America accepted it, but in 2020, a majority of voters realized his was the lure of a siren, that he actually wanted to dismantle our democracy, and rejected him with the most votes cast for a challenger, 78 million, and against an incumbent.
Yet, 72 million did vote for Trump, despite showing that he was incapable of leading an effort to control the pandemic, confessing to knowing about the dangers of the coronavirus before Covid-19 exploded and took more than 240,000 lives and infected 10 million Americans, and contracting the disease himself while telling the public it was no worse than the flu.
According to polls, many of those who voted for him did not blame him for these failures. Indeed, he did not blame himself for failing to act on the responsibility that was clearly his alone.
In the autumn of 1936, as the popularity of fascism grew in Germany and Italy, a play opened in theatres across the United States, “It Can’t Happen Here,” based on the Sinclair Lewis novel. It warned of fascism occurring in America.
Eighty years later, in 2016, fascism, in the guise of Trumpism, arrived at America’s doorstep and has been trying to happen here, battering the pillars of our constitutional democracy: a free press, the rule of law, fair elections.
With less than two months before Biden becomes president, Trump and his allies have stepped up their attacks, making endless false accusations about the voting process and about anyone who supports the undisputed outcome that was arrived at fairly and legally.
Congressional Republicans, like the Vichy, are showing Americans, in particular 71 million, that elections are to be challenged without evidence of wrongdoing; that the presidency isn’t about the nation, but about one man who flouts the rule of law, and about one party that allows him.
They may be doing this with a wink and a nod to give themselves an edge with their constituents, knowing President-elect Joe Biden did legitimately win the election, but that’s political gamesmanship that is lost on many Americans.
We may yet dodge a bullet aimed at the heart of our democracy, but Trump and his Republican enablers already have done much to wound this nation and its democratic institutions.
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris – carried into office by a diverse coalition of voters led by African Americans, Latinos, South Asians and Native Americans – face an immense job, from getting the pandemic under control to re-building the economy.
Their most important job, though, is showing a nation divided by tribalism (Trump won the white vote) how to again live in a democracy together. Biden and Harris are about to face their moment between the “right time and right place.” We hope that they chose the best of themselves.
(Image: Library of Congress)
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