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We Are Marching in the Wrong Direction

By Luis Fleischman 

The leader of the free world, the United States of America, is not really facing an economic crisis as some analysts and political opponents of the Biden Administration have argued. Nine percent inflation is not good, but it is not extreme. It certainly has not reached the point that it could not be reversed. Experience has shown that the U.S economy is resilient and whatever crisis faces now it is likely to recover. 

The main problem the U.S facing is political and institutional. Our democracy is in danger of collapsing altogether. 

Our democracy is collapsing because many politicians, parts of the citizenry and even some sectors of the press, are actively encouraging or working for that collapse. 

Regarding the Republican Party, we have seen that GOP primary elections in 2020 were de facto suppressed. Now, many of party members are willing to defend Trump even as there are indications that could potentially incriminate him in activities considered to be illegal. Why are so many Republicans who owe their posts to mainstream institutional procedures now willing to defend Trump’s anti-institutional politics, including election denial, failure to respond to subpoenas, and attacks on law enforcement and the judiciary? 

Part of the answer is because Trump is popular. Going against Trump risks their chances to be elected or re-elected. Liz Cheney is Exhibit One.

This is the worry expressed by thinkers such as James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill. They all feared the tyranny of the majority. The majority’s will in this case dictates the politicians’ behavior. If they don’t support Trump, they are likely to lose. To secure the support of voters, a significant number of politicians are willing to sacrifice the institutional structure of U.S. democracy.  As the scholar Jan-Werner Muller has pointed out, it is not only the popular effervescence that promotes demagogues. For populists to succeed, they need the backing of some mainstream politicians. This is what has happened in the United States. People like Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, Charles Grassley, and others have provided direct or indirect support to anti-democratic populist politics. In England, the extreme right-wing Nigel Farage received the support of mainstream conservatives like Michael Gove.  

We are not suggesting that Republican politicians should have rushed to accuse Trump and oust him from the party.  Everyone including Mr. Trump, is presumed innocent unless and until they are found guilty by the justice system. But legal presumptions of innocence shouldn’t be an excuse for demagogic accusations. The fact that these politicians often jump to the conclusion absent any evidence that Trump is victim of a political persecution, or that the FBI should be defunded for riding Trump’s home in search of classified documents constitutes an attack on the system that has sustained the American system of public accountability.

No better example than the defeat of Congresswoman Liz Cheney in the recent congressional Republican primaries. This example shows the peril of supporting our ordinary voting system and the traditional notion of due process in our legal system. Cheney endorses an investigation and co-chairs the committee that investigates the events that led to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Because of that, she lost her primary to a fact-free election denier.

But it was not just the voters. Elected GOP officials who knew or should have known better attacked her. The fact that she strongly supported an investigation led more than 100 Republican members of Congress to endorse Cheney’s pro-Trump opponent, Harriet Hageman.  Cheney – who has strong conservative credentials and won two years ago with 73% of the vote – received the support of a few moderates such as Senator Mitt Romney, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, and former President George W. Bush. Her resounding, 2-1 defeat was not an isolated case. Of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, only two have won reelection. The question is, again, if the assault on the Capitol is not a sufficient reason to investigate, what could be the criteria for an investigation possibly be? If there are signs that Trump himself or his campaign lied or committed fraud when they asked to add votes to the count in Georgia, shouldn’t this be investigated? Are we a nation of laws, or do power and popularity exempt privileged individuals, leaders, and politicians from scrutiny? 

It looks like the latter is prevailing over the former.  

The Democrats are not entirely pure in this election cycle. Some Democrats are willing to aid election-denying Republican primary candidates who hold conspiracy theories. These Democrats hope that a more extreme candidate will be easier to defeat in a general election. They are willing to play with fire and eliminate the last defense of Republican moderates. What is worse is that a Democratic victory is hardly guaranteed. Such a degree of cynicism is also an attack on democracy. A good Democrat should support a constitutionalist-moderate Republican, particularly in times when it is not just policy that is at stake, but the democratic system itself. Moreover, no untrustworthy, hate-filled, fact-denying candidates should be given the imprimatur of being a Republican nominee for office. 

The MAGA movement has claimed that it represents the common people against the elites and the privileged. More critical voices claim that Trump and Trumpism represent the mob, the ignorant, and the irrational voter. 

However, it is worthwhile to remind those voices that Trump adopted policies that benefited corporations and the wealthy who own and run them. This includes many so-called “globalists” that Trump himself and many of his supporters so despise.  This has brought more mainstream individuals and groups to support Trump. So, it is not just the “irrational” voter, the mob, that fuels this populist tendency. It is part of the mainstream political and economic establishment. 

We can see the consequences of this deterioration very clearly. Our traditional American democracy finds itself in a crisis comparable to those faced by younger, less secure democracies. The former Czech president, the late Vaclav Havel, described the behavior of fellow politicians in 1992, hardly three years after the transition to democracy.  Havel has pointed out that every political activity has been characterized by “an extravagant hunger for power and a willingness to gain the favor of a confused electorate by offering a colorful range of attractive nonsense. Mutual accusations, denunciations and slander among political opponents know no bounds… Partisan considerations still visibly take precedence over pragmatic attempts to arrive at reasonable and useful solutions to problems… Supporting the government in a good cause is practically shameful. Snipping at politicians who declare their support for another political group is a matter of course”. This strikes a familiar note to us today.

Of course, this is but one example of what happens in countries with far less developed democracies.

The democratic system works best when it includes people with different ideas: liberal, conservative, socialist, libertarian, and everything in between.  Having strong Democratic and Republican Parties, and skeptical and persuadable independents is important. Furthermore, parliamentarian and congressional systems can serve as centers of reason where these ideas are placed on the table for analysis and scrutiny, available to persuade or to achieve reasonable compromise.  

No institution can survive without behavior that supports it. In the United States, we are not only moving in the wrong direction, but too many are marching there in lockstep.

About Luis Fleischman

Luis Fleischman is a professor of Sociology at Palm Beach State College, the co-founder of the think-tank the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research. He is also the author of “Latin America in the Post-Chavez Era: The Threat to U.S. Security,” and the author of the book, “The Middle East Riddle: The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Light of Political and Social Transformations in the Arab World,” to be published by New Academia.”