In her last Trump-era letter from Washington, Susan B. Glasser writes in The New Yorker:
Precisely at noon on Wednesday, Donald Trump’s disastrous Presidency will end, two weeks to the day after he unleashed a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol, seeking to overturn the election results, and one week to the day after he was impeached for so doing. He leaves behind a city and a country reeling from four hundred thousand Americans dead, as of Tuesday, from a pandemic whose gravity he downplayed and denied; an economic crisis; and an internal political rift so great that it invites comparisons to the Civil War.
In the end, Trump was everything his haters feared—a chaos candidate, in the prescient words of one of his 2016 rivals, who became a chaos President.
Democracy Witness is a non-profit newsroom project, with a mission to report on the health of civic processes and violations of human rights. Our purpose is to ensure that all people enjoy the unalienable right to contribute to the improvement of the world around them and to remain free from oppressive abuses of power. #LiveYourDemocracy DemocracyWitness.org
In an op-ed in Ha’aretz, David Rothkopf writes, the day after Donald Trump was impeached for Incitement of Insurrection:
Donald Trump is undoubtedly America’s worst president, the only president to be impeached twice, the only person to lead a coup against the United States government, the president who presided over and was personally responsible for the greatest one year loss of life in American history, the only president since Herbert Hoover to actually leave office with fewer people employed than when he was sworn in, the only world leader to have been summarily banned from virtually all major social media sites because his words were so inflammatory, the most prolific liar if not conspiracy theorist in U.S. political history (which is saying something), a man who managed to be at once the most corrupt, the most odious, the most ignorant, the most ineffective and the most evil political leader in U.S. history.
Democracy Witness is a non-profit newsroom project, with a mission to report on the health of civic processes and violations of human rights. Our purpose is to ensure that all people enjoy the unalienable right to contribute to the improvement of the world around them and to remain free from oppressive abuses of power. #LiveYourDemocracy DemocracyWitness.org
Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.
Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth.
Photo shows view of the huge crowd from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, during the March on Washington. Original black and white negative by Warren K. Leffler. Taken August 28th, 1963, Washington D.C, United States (@libraryofcongress). Colorized by Jordan J. Lloyd. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA https://www.loc.gov/resource/ds.04417/
There are many reasons political pundits say the United States is a center-right country. None of them hold up to scrutiny. First, let’s start from the origin of the Left-Right construct:
“The Left” refers to the left side of the French Revolutionary Assembly — who favored a democratic republic.
“The Right” refers to their opponents — who favored a return to absolute monarchy.
Just starting there, even the most conservative Americans are much further left than we generally acknowledge.
Libertarianism cannot fit into “The Right”;
small-town local government as the leading lever of national decision-making cannot fit into “The Right”;
pro-business conservatism cannot fit into “The Right”;
the right of the people to compel government to tax the people less would have no place under the autocracy of the original “Right”;
religious liberty has no place in the absolutist mindset of “The Right”, where the monarch claims to be a political agent of God’s will.
In its original sense, “The Right” is antithetical to American democracy. Shocking as it may seem, in the true sense of the Left-Right construct, Americans who favor climate action, or the principle that Black Lives Matter, or who want tax fairness, or who defend the 2nd Amendment, are all more “Left” than “Right”, because they believe people’s aspirations, priorities, and justice, should govern, not the whims of autocrats.
Without a healthy, inclusive, just and reciprocal social contract, we cannot be free.
This 4th of July, to honor the long-ago opened and still incomplete move for citizen-led self-government, we must fully commit to the work of ending structural racism and reckon with the ways in which misgovernment, economic inequality, and a surging pandemic affect the meaning and lived reality of human freedom. Constraints on real personal sovereignty deny tens of millions the ability to define their own journey and chase their dreams.
In his end of year letter, Chief Justice John Roberts has directly addressed what may be the defining Constitutional issue of our time—whether brute force will govern instead of the law (and by extension: whether the federal courts will remain independent of politics and so able to uphold the principles of the Constitution and the universal rights it protects).
The Chief Justice notes the that the first to hold his post, John Jay, was sidelined from his role as one of the three authors of the Federalist Papers, by a rash of mob violence. He writes:
It is sadly ironic that John Jay’s efforts to educate his fellow citizens about the Fram ers’ plan of government fell victim to a rock thrown by a rioter motivated by a rumor. Happily, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay ulti- mately succeeded in convincing the public of the virtues of the principles embodied in the Constitution. Those principles leave no place for mob violence.
Democracy is hard, but also simple; rights supersede powers, always. Any effort by any person or faction to use public office to gain unfair advantage is a crime against democracy. That is how we protect human dignity, freedom, and ingenuity, and ensure we are empowered to build a better future, together.
Last night, as he welcomed the audience to a Democratic Party Presidential Primary debate, on the same day the United States Ambassador to the EU testified under oath that President Trump directed an interconinental extortion plot, Rep. John Lewis told the nation “We must save the soul of America.”
Every day, Donald Trump lies about his views, his interests, his actions, and the law. His claim that “Article II would let me do whatever I want” is so fundamentally contrary to the rule of law, it calls into question whether he is eligible to serve at all. Contrary to his claims, the Constitution makes sure the President cannot be above the law.
The 2018 midterm elections in the United States were historic. A record number of women are going to Congress. Native Americans, immigrants, Muslims, and gay candidates, all saw historic breakthroughs. Far from putting Trump in charge of the American political landscape, the 2018 midterms revealed a more forthright, cooperative America, in which people of conscience work together to counter corruption and build a better future.
The Democratic Party showed itself to be a diverse party of the political future, attuned to the 21st century, full of new voices with fresh ideas, connected to a burgeoning movement of people demanding better civics. The Republican Party, by contrast, campaigned in a way that has shocked the conscience—echoing segregationist, white supremacist propaganda and anti-democracy conspiracy theory. It cannot win a national election going forward if this continues.
democracy witness 