What is Happening Before Our Very Eyes?
Do We See and Understand the Seismic Political Change before Us?
It’s Show Time!
Maybe it’s not the “greatest show on earth” like the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus advertises itself to be, but judging from the news media’s coverage of the 2024 Republican convention this week, it’s easy to see why some people might think that’s what it is. But, what it appears to be and what it really is are two completely different things. What is going on here, really?
Change- We Often Adapt to It
We Americans seem to be fairly adept at recognizing major change going on in our lives and the world around us. We may not talk about it a lot, but as much as we have to, we embrace change and try our best to adapt to it. We try to find ways for that change to improve both our own lives and that of our family. Whether we say it out loud or not, we know that change in our economy, in technology, and in other facets of our lives is happening rapidly. We notice it and we don’t try to deny it’s happening, even if we don’t really like it.
Except Change in the Public Square
There is one notable exception to our ability to recognize the change around us. It is in the public arena- our politics, our civic arena, our government. Change has been happening there at a breathtaking pace, but what gets discussed and is focused on are only the symptoms and manifestations of change, not what that change will truly mean for Americans’ daily lives. What is not discussed very clearly or forthrightly by the average American is the question of what type of change is actually underway in American government and politics?
Certainly they are excellent numerous books, articles, and political punditry about the change in our public square, but how many Americans pay close attention to them? Or, perhaps it’s because when we took civics in school (if we did really take it), we were not taught that American democracy is always changing, ever fluid, and constantly under assault. That creates a very static view for many of us that democracy is something that has been and will always be there for us, that it is stable like a rock and unchanging. But the question remains, what are Americans actually hearing and understanding when it comes to this political change their democracy is undergoing?
The Big Disconnect
The answer to that question- we are not seeing it. We are not noticing it. We are not focused on it.
Not focused on what? We are not focused on what is taking place right now in Milwaukee on center stage at the Republican National Convention. It is political change of gigantic proportions.
What are We Missing?
Sure, we notice all the speeches and grandstanding about what are essentially culture war issues like immigration, and that America is a Christian nation. But we are missing the BIG issue- that below the surface our democracy is being eroded, weakened, and changed by fundamental institutional change.
How It’s Happening
In a two party system, for our democracy to be significantly weakened, requires at least one of our major political parties to be converted from a democratic political party to a strong man cult of personality. This one man cult of personality requires its members to pledge allegiance first and only to the party’s leader, not to a nation and most importantly, not to the nation’s constitution. Further, no debate is permitted within the party. All must agree with the party leader. Should they disagree with him they do so at their political peril.
And so it has happened with the Republican Party, lead by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. To solidify this now personality cult, it has jettisoned democratic norms and values and replaced them with values that support strongman rule and fascist autocracy. The democratic norm of mutual toleration of one’s political opposition also had to be eradicated. Now, instead of the democratic value of believing those who are your political opponents still must have “a seat at the table”, now the strongman party refers to them as “enemies”. Enemies who must be vilified and destroyed.
The Biggest Change Many Have Missed
The biggest institutional change eroding our democracy many have missed is the change to the Office of the President and the Executive Branch. This is a key part of the Republican Party platform adopted for its convention. It’s contained in the plan prepared by the right wing billionaire funded Heritage Foundation called Project 2025.
This blueprint for autocracy plans to take our Constitution that provides for the checks and balances of three separate co-equal branches of government and change that Constitution without a vote of the people, the consent of the governed. Instead, the Office of the President will be changed to a unitary executive with massive controls and power over the federal bureaucracy, including the Department of Justice.
No more will the Department of Justice and its law enforcement agencies like the FBI have functional autonomy to enforce the rule of law without fear or favor. The opposite will happen. The President’s through out the DOJ will decide which of the presidents’s political opponents and “enemies” will be investigated and prosecuted. The president can direct the Attorney General as to who to “go after” and which friends to “give a pass” legally.
There’s much more that this strongman unitary executive will do if elected according to Project 2025. Thousands of professional career civil servants hired on the basis of merit will be fired. In their place will be hired political loyalists of the president hired under a patronage-political spoils system whose only qualifications for hiring will be their steadfast loyalty to the president. Many agencies and departments such as the Department of Education (DOE) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will be abolished. What could possibly go wrong?
Vanished
And just like that, in real time, our democracy vanishes. Vanishes as we watch. Vanishes while some of us do nothing, some mistake it for patriotism and say “amen”, some won’t even notice what’s happening, and others might not even care.
That is, until they realize the freedoms they’ve lost. Freedoms lost on prime time TV under the guise of autocracy disguised as faux democracy in a faux democratic political party. Freedoms our Founding Fathers fought a protracted, bloody Revolutionary War for which they risked everything- their homes, livelihood, families, and their own lives. Gone- poof! Freedoms we’ve had for over 200 years that will take generations to regain if in fact we can even get them back. All because we failed as citizens to appreciate and cling with everything we had to the providential gift of democracy.
Just as Joni Mitchell sang in her song “Big Yellow Taxi” saying, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone?” It doesn’t have to go away. It’s up to us, and only us, to save our democracy. We alone can save it. The question is, do we value it enough to save it?
You can count me in.