Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans have spent much of the past couple of weeks attempting to convince the American electorate that former President Donald J. Trump and his MAGA enablers are an existential threat to American democracy. As one writer, Zack Beauchamp, who is funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to report on the democratic decline in Israel and Hungary, explained recently on VOX:
In the game Jenga, players take turns removing wooden blocks from a rickety tower and then stacking them back on the top. Each removed piece makes the base more wobbly; each block put back on top makes it more unbalanced until it eventually topples.
This, I’d argue, is basically how we should be thinking about the stakes of the 2024 election for American democracy: an already-rickety tower of state would be at risk of falling in on itself entirely, with catastrophic results for those who live under its shelter.
Vice President Harris, in her closing argument of 2024 campaign season, added to the case by saying:
Donald Trump has told us his priorities for a second term. He has an enemies list of people he intends to prosecute. He says that one of his highest priorities is to set free the violent extremists who insulted those law enforcement officers on January 6th. Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him, people he calls “the enemy within from America”…This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.
It’s not just former President Trump’s opponents who are trying to warn the voters. His former White House Chief-of-Staff and Homeland Security Secretary, John Kelly, has gone on record saying that, in his opinion, “Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the rule of law.”
Adding to Kelly’s opinion, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, reported in that magazine:
Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”…Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient.
Another writer for The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, joined Peter Pomerantsev, a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, to produce a six-episode podcast titled Autocracy in America, which used their expertise to demonstrate not only how the current Trump campaign threatens to install an autocrat in the White House but how authoritarian tactics are already at work in America.
With so many politicians, pundits, and citizens rightfully anxious and/or frightened of another Trump presidency, does it make sense for supporters of democracy to use whatever means necessary to prevent a wannabe-dictator and his fascist cronies from taking control of the levers of power?
I don’t believe it does. As I’ve noted on my profiles all over the Internet, I am a radical (d)emocrat. One aspect of democracy is an ethic rooted in the power of nonviolent persuasion, where violence includes violence against the basic rules of democracy.
A few weeks back, I shared a quote from a Washington Post columnist that bears repeating:
[The online class] is convinced they need to save America from itself, and specifically, that they need to save America from 50% of its citizens… Those people are America! You can’t save American democracy from half the electorate. It doesn’t work that way. You have to deal with your fellow citizens. There’s no shortcut. There’s no one final victory where the music swells and lights come up and we all clap.
Suppose former President Trump is dutifully elected by the majority of Americans (by which I mean he wins the popular vote). In that case, I will cry in despair for the future of my country for a little while, then continue to speak and write to persuade my fellow Americans to change their minds and for America’s political leaders (including members of the bureaucracy) to support policies that protect our Constitutional democracy. I will provide financial support to organizations that work to further the social justice of our civilization. I will, if necessary, put my body on the line to save the people I love.
I am terribly fearful of what will happen to the constitutional system of the United States if President Trump is inaugurated. I am even more fearful of what will happen to the people of the United States, particularly those who are not White men with over a million dollars in savings and investments.
But I cannot bring myself to a place where I would encourage Americans to overthrow by violent means the results of a free and fair democratic election.
Now, if President Trump does not win the popular vote but does win the electoral college, I will return to my previous stance, which was that the people of Vermont should secede from the United States. I will not start a violent insurrection to make that happen, but I will become an insistent voice on the topic. Arguing in its favor will become my form of dissent while allowing me to continue to emphasize democratic fairness.
Regardless of what happens, I promise to remain engaged, informed, and vocally active to help shape the future of democracy. The process does not end on election day. It thrives in our commitment to dialogue, persuasive advocacy, and our relentless pursuit of peaceful change.