How Did We Get Here?
This question is not as easy to answer as it may seem. Racism has been prevalent in America for most of its history. Sometimes that racism is overt, as in the northeast of my youth, and sometimes it is much more covert, as in many places in the modern-day South. Over the past decade, and I am sure well before that, there have been a series of cases of unarmed African-Americans killed by police officers. From Freddie Gray to Michael Brown to Eric Gardner to George Floyd, these incidents continue to happen. Do they indicate a pattern of systemic racism, as the protesters claim, or are they isolated incidents that receive a lot of press coverage due to the prevalence of modern technology? That is a question for rigorous academic research to answer. For my part, one instance is too many and we must find a way to ensure that such incidents do not recur in the future. Every person has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of skin color, national origin, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or whatever other characteristics they might possess. Police brutality must be dealt with firmly to discourage it from happening again and again.
Another reason we have reached this point is complacency in our politics. All that is necessary for the abnormal to become acceptable is for it to happen again and again and again. That which was morally reprehensible becomes acceptable over time if we do not demand an end to it. That is one of the encouraging things about the current protests. Americans of all races and creeds are uniting in opposition to racism and police brutality except one...elected officials within the Republican Party. It seems to be a party adrift without a rudder or a moral compass these days. From the president threatening to shoot looters to using tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash-bang grenades to clear Lafayette Square for a photo-op at St. John's Church to Republican Senators dodging questions about the incident, the party has been all but silent. Why?
In a recent article in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum compares the collaboration of French elites with the Nazi invaders after the fall of Paris to the condescension of Republican elites to Donald Trump's redefinition of what is acceptable in American politics. As she points out, the comparison is not between Hitler and Trump, it is between their enablers. In both cases, the elites calculated that their careers would be better served by going along with what they knew was wrong than by standing against it. Washington, D.C., and by implication, America itself, fell in November of 2016 when Donald J. Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States.
Ms. Applebaum makes her case by pointing to two different elites within the Republican Party and their collaboration (or lack thereof) with Trump. The first is Senator Lindsay Graham, who spoke about Trump being dangerous and deranged before he was elected president but has since become one of the president's key defenders and sycophants. On the other hand, Mitt Romney warned of the fall that would come with Trump's nomination and election as president, a position he has maintained afterward, including his vote to convict the president following the Senate's impeachment trial. Why has Graham abandoned his ideals while Romney held onto his? One clue may be found in Romney's Mormonism, which does not include shifting moral grounds while Graham's evangelical base in South Carolina embraced Trumpism whole-heartedly. Going against one's base is politically dangerous. Thus, Graham enables Trumpism and its continued assault on American ideals.
A decade ago, America was in the second year of the Obama Presidency, the first (and only) African-American to serve as the nation's chief executive. Many hoped America had finally overcome the stains of its racial past. Alas, that hope was quickly vanquished as Tea Partiers launched an assault on Obama's character that labeled him as a Kenyan witch-doctor who was not born in America. This led to the so-called 'birther' conspiracy promoted largely by none other than Donald J. Trump, who offered to put up $5 million for Obama's birth certificate, which the president produced. Of course, Trump and his sycophants claimed it was a fake and failed to produce the cash. Imagine the outrage if President Obama had responded to his critics the way Trump does to his, tweeting nasty epithets about them. The Republicans' heads would literally have exploded as they called him out and labeled him an angry black man. President Obama, of course, did not react to his critics that way. He simply went about the business of being the President of the United States.
Fast forward a decade to June 2020. Donald Trump has spent much of the past four years attacking his political opponents, urging foreign governments to investigate his rivals (illegally), telling America how great he and his administration are, and lying through his teeth about it the whole time. Yet, his fanboys on Fox and within the Republican Party eat it up like dogs licking the vomit off the floor. It is a party that has descended into irrelevancy and should be rewarded by banishment from office forever. But it won't be because Americans are too wedded to their parties. As Trump has worked tirelessly to divide Americans against each other (see this piece by General James Mattis), Republicans in Congress have cowered behind their masks believing that the Trump era will one day end and they can say they were against him all along. I hope we are smarter than that. I hope we never forget their cowardice in the face of a full-frontal assault on this great nation. I hope we never forget how President Trump desecrated the memory of George Floyd by claiming that he was 'looking down' and smiling because the economic jobs report was better than expected, which made it a 'great day' for him and for all Americans. I hope we never forget that George Floyd was murdered by four police officers in Minneapolis, MN.
Where Do We Go From Here?
America cannot begin to heal until it comes to grips with what President Trump has done. Until it is willing to call out the president for his divisiveness, for his abuse of power, and for his triviality. He has done more to make America the laughing stock of the world than any president in my lifetime. But the one thing it will take above all else to undo the damage he has done and begin to set this country back on the path to 'a more perfect union' is a recognition by elected Republicans of their complicity and their collaboration in the destruction of American ideals. When the party remembers its roots as the party of Lincoln, when its elected officials are willing to stand up against Trump's abuse of power and degradation of the Constitution, only then will there be a chance to right the sinking ship. It is a time for courage, not for cowards. It is time for honest people everywhere to stop enabling this president. It is time for our voices to be heard by saying we are 'mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.'
