Tag: dictatorship

Pearl Harbor was the start

While driving home from work one day last week, one of us at the HP saw a letterboard sign in front of a small cornerstore in their mid-sized city that read:

“Was WWII over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”

We don’t know anyone at the store, and have no idea what their intent was, but we assume it was a call to resistance against dictatorship in America. The first emotional response was positive. It actually took one second to catch on to… the Germans?

A quick check confirms that the Empire of Japan, not its Axis ally Germany, bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, drawing the U.S. at last into officially declaring war and committing the women and men of its military to combat in World War II.

So was this sign a joke? Was it, just maybe, a knowing nod to how little Americans know about our own history? Or was it evidence of that?

We can’t know. But we can decide to commit ourselves to the first meaning of resistance. When we see the stunning blows dealt to America’s democracy by Americans who have done nothing but benefit from it, the very fact that this is happening reads like defeat. But it’s not. It’s the opening salvo of anti-Americans against the rest of us. And we, like the U.S. navy after Pearl Harbor, need time to assemble our full defenses and our offense, time for people who haven’t taken action to realize they must, and time to move from grief to furious resolve. But then we, like the U.S. navy, military, government, and people will shift into a high gear of both resistance and counter-attack. For us, it won’t be through killing and violence, but through an unstoppable commitment to our democratic processes.

So we’re reeling from the Pearl Harbor attack that began in January. But as another American once said, we have not yet begun to fight.

Washington is a foreigner

We’ve had a very unsettling experience here at the HP.

Our 2012 post “Washington’s Farewell Address: Avoiding Foreign Entanglements” has been trending since Inauguration Day, most likely because of this section:

“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.  The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

—This is the part of the Address that most people remember (the idea, if not the actual words). Here Washington is warning against political factions, and he equates the formation of political parties with inevitable dissension. This definition of what can happen when partisanship runs rampant must sound familiar to us today: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension… leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual [who] turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.” When the political process grinds to a halt because one or more political parties refuses to work with others, only a charismatic individual can take the lead, and this kind of cult of personality is antithetical to democracy.

“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.”

—Political factions or parties “[serve] always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.” Again, so familiar to us today, at a time of great partisan conflict.

Formal despotism has come upon us in the United States under Trump. Whether it becomes permanent remains to be seen, but that is the intention of Trump and everyone who supports him. Factionalism, magnified beyond all possibility before the advent of social media, has agitated our nation with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindled the animosity of one part against another, and foment first riot and now insurrection (by way of the executive branch).

Washington… the name conjures up the entire American journey, from colonies to revolution to democratic republic. The highs of Enlightenment, Constitution, and the quest for representative government contrasted with the lows of colonizing conquest, slavery, and denying women the rights of citizens. The triumph of creating the phrase “with liberty and justice for all” and the failure of having to struggle and fight for over two centuries to make it more of a reality. (Yes, the phrase comes from the 1885 pledge of allegiance, but think about why that is–why someone 110 years after the Revolutionary War began, a veteran of the U.S. Army during the Civil War, used it to express American patriotism). Washington played a crucial role in founding and preserving the United States, quite literally for better and for worse. His enlightened understanding of liberty and willingness to fight for it stand beside his callow and inhuman reluctance to stop breeding human beings for sale when he understood that it was, in fact, clearly morally evil. We inherit both sides in America. The fight since his time has been to reduce the evil by growing the good until we finally achieve real democracy. As young people, when we saw Washington’s image in a K12 textbook, it reminded us we are inheritors of a just war for equality.

But now, one of us recently saw this classic, familiar image of Washington somewhere in passing, and had the weird and troubling realization that it felt foreign. They had, in short, the feeling that the line has been broken.

The line from our founding through the centuries to today, with its successes and failures on the path toward full democracy, is broken. We’re not connected with our past anymore. Washington is no longer someone to learn lessons from as we shape our collective identity. His image used to be a nutshell for the idea that doing the work to make liberty and justice for all a reality is what makes us Americans. He left so much unfinished and even untouched. Generations that followed him took up that work, honoring the good in our history but insisting on calling out and destroying the bad.

But now Americans are being told that we have no collective identity, only factions, only one of which is righteous. That fighting for justice is not our inheritance or our mission. That, in fact, our society has always been just because it has always benefitted rich straight white Christians. That, we are now told, is what we need to make sure continues.

The majority of our current government and our citizens no longer understand what’s good in our history, let alone acknowledge the evil within it. They’re destroying history, deleting its records, burning its archives, and forcibly teaching something new and false and deadly, dedicated to the principle that no humans are created equal to rich straight white Christians.

Is the break irreparable–permanent? Not yet. Maybe not ever, if the minority who stay on the path to full democracy refuse to leave it. The sickening nature of this moment should be a tonic that keeps us on that path. Maybe moments of disconnect, destruction, and rupture like this are what it takes to remind us of the high stakes of this battle. For now, not recognizing Washington anymore is pretty strong medicine to take.

Democracy on the brink

Back on January 8 of this year, we posted “Truth or Myth: the president can break the law”, focusing on the main argument that was so often obscured:

Unfortunately at this critical moment, Americans have sidetracked into discussions about whether U.S. legal precedent supports or conflicts with the claim that a U.S. president is immune from criminal prosecution instead of focusing on the actual threat: Trump doesn’t want his illegal actions to be protected based on his role as president. He wants them protected based on the new idea that the president is allowed to commit crimes. A president (and by extension, anyone who works for him, or in the federal government, or state government, or local government) can do whatever they want because committing crimes is no longer illegal for them.

At that time, we were awaiting Spring decisions from the Supreme Court that included a ruling on this question. Worriedly we asked,

The question is always, will these rulings [denying that the president is above the law] be upheld by the current Supreme Court, packed as it is with members who have already made it clear that they have an agenda to overturn every ruling that supports civil rights in this country?

Very gravely, but not unexpectedly, we got our answer on July 1 in Trump v. United States, perhaps the most aptly named case ever to appear before that court. As the PBS Newshour sums it up,

In a landmark ruling with potentially major impact on the 2024 presidential campaign, a U.S. Supreme Court majority ruled that presidents — including former President Donald Trump — have immunity from prosecution when carrying out “official acts.”

“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” the court wrote. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

We spent a lot of time in January making the deviousness of the language clear: “[the lawyers for Trump] are not claiming that Trump did nothing illegal. They are claiming that it’s okay that he did.They are claiming that the president can commit crimes–acts that are clearly illegal for everyone else–without consequence.”

How can this be? Because Trump’s legal team changed the definition of “private actions”:

“…precedents [afford] the President immunity from suit for his official conduct – primarily on the basis that he should be enabled to perform his duties effectively without fear that a particular decision might give rise to personal liability… the separation-of-powers doctrine did not require a stay of all private actions against the President. Separation of powers is preserved by guarding against the encroachment or aggrandizement of one of the coequal branches of the government at the expense of another. However, a federal trial court tending to a civil suit in which the President is a party performs only its judicial function, not a function of another branch. No decision by a trial court could curtail the scope of the President’s powers.”

What Trump’s lawyers did was broaden the definition of “private actions” to claim that EVERY action a president takes is formal–that is, presidential, part of carrying out the duties of the office.

And the Justices appointed by Trump agreed, saying that “presidents are completely immune from prosecution for things they did through core constitutional powers of the presidency [and] are at least presumed to be immune–and potentially are always immune–for all official acts of their presidency.”

But wait, you might say; they’re still saying official acts only, aren’t they? That’s where the true democracy-killing intent comes in, for the ruling says that what constitutes a core power and an official act is open to interpretation.

That is, the president can decide what is an official act and what is not, and will likely decide that all their acts are official, and the increasingly anti-democratic, Trump-appointed court judges will agree.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent, this ruling “expands the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds… [this] expansive view of core power will effectively insulate all sorts of noncore conduct from criminal prosecution…” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also dissented, writing that “it appears that the first decision point is whether the alleged criminal conduct involves one of the President’s ‘core’ powers. If so (and apparently regardless of the degree to which the conduct [calls on] that core power, the President is absolutely immune from criminal liability for engaging in that criminal conduct.”

Again, Trump and his team don’t attempt to hide the fascist intent of their argument. Infamously, during arguments before the Court, Justice Sotomayor asked Trump attorney D. John Sauer this:

Sotomayor: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts that, for which, he can get immunity?

Sauer: It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.

It’s mind-numbing. The U.S. Supreme Court has granted any president immunity from legal prosecution for any action he takes. Anything. Any action. This is the definition of a dictatorship.

Under the guise of protecting separation of powers, the Court has agreed to give the executive branch dictatorship powers.

It no longer matters that our judicial system is steadily filling with appointees dedicated to ending democracy in this country. None of their courts will ever hear a case against a president ever again.

It’s hard to take in this moment fully. Life has gone on seemingly as usual since July 1. We’re about to have a presidential election as if nothing has changed. Some people seem to believe that if Trump loses, the threat of this ruling is removed. They are wrong. The president now has dictatorial powers in this country. Anyone who takes office can use them, and when someone in power can do something, they do it.

We have taken a step that we can’t return from any time soon. It would require dedicated, years-long work by a coalition of American politicians, judges, lawyers, and citizens to change the composition of our now anti-democratic, Trump courts and get this ruling reversed. It’s very, very hard to believe that this will happen without first descending into dictatorship. And that’s if Trump is not elected this November, the odds of which are vanishingly small. Republican election officials in many states are already prepared to throw the election, and again make no secret of this:

A report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found “[a]t least 35 current county election officials” that have voted against certifying an election in the past. Public Wise, Informing Democracy, and the Center for Media and Democracy identified dozens of additional election officials that have “promot[ed] election denialism or amplif[ied] unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud or irregularities.” The amount of election deniers acting as election officials “presents a challenge for monitoring certification,” specifically in swing states and remote areas. 

…The Brookings Institution found that in 2020, “at least 17 county election officials across six swing states attempted to prevent certification of county vote totals.” In 2022, it grew to “at least 22 county election officials” who voted to delay certification in swing states. This year, there have been “at least eight county officials” that have already voted against certifying election results for primary or special elections.

So we hang by our fingernails from a precipice. Again, it’s just so hard to believe this is really happening. It’s not time to give up. But it is time to prepare for a very different future, in which fighting for justice and democracy through our established channels will be much harder, and often impossible, depending on the state or county you live in. It will likely get much darker before we do fight our way back to the light. But we will continue to use those channels, to force them back into existence where they’ve been choked out, and to stand up for our democratic systems, flawed as they are. That’s what we’re fighting for, after all–the chance to continue the work America has been struggling to do, with success and failure, anger and division, celebration and humility, since 1787–form a more perfect union.