Thursday's postcard, and a succinct, spot-on warning about the state of American politics

August 3, 2023

A quintet of American White Pelicans along the shore line of Clear Lake in western Spokane County

A Ruptured Democracy

Ron Brownstein, one of America’s most astute political reporters, has a gift for distillation. His knack for pithy synthesis is on display in his most recent piece for The Atlantic, entitled “Trump’s Threat to Democracy is Now Systemic.”

Brownstein’s piece is as much about Trump as it is his followers, and here’s the one-sentence delivery: “For the first time in the nation’s modern history, the dominant faction in one of our two major parties has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to accept antidemocratic means to advance its interests.”

It’s a vital point because, to a large extent, we remain a distracted nation, increasingly cynical of politics, but generally nodding along with the notion that both parties are the same sort of animals—just arguing for different priorities.

The problem is: if that were ever true, it’s not now. What Brownstein is getting at when he speaks to Trump’s threat to democracy is the ‘heads I win, tails you cheated’ posturing—from the party’s leadership to its right-wing media allies—that brazenly disputes the legitimacy of democratic outcomes the party opposes. Moreover, it gives added permission to further disenfranchise opposition voters, either through gerrymandering or the “alternate election” scheme laid out in yesterday’s federal indictment of Donald Trump.

Exhibit 1, of course, is the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol which has been re-packaged as merely a lawful demonstration of God-fearing patriots that got a bit unruly around the edges. Never mind what we all watched, in real time—a riot of police-battering MAGA-men, many of whom were chanting “hang Mike Pence” and others, with zip ties, looking for Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, and other prey, with clear intent to injure or kill. Speaker Pelosi was able escape, but of course her husband, Paul, was badly injured when an intruder—looking for her—invaded their home in Pacific Heights this past January and fractured his skull with a hammer blow.

These are not men in narrow ties and wool coats wearing “I like Ike” badges. The coats have been replaced by body armor and the quaint badges with “fuck your feelings” banners. They believe democracy has failed because they perceive it as empowering people they dislike—by dint of their religion (or lack thereof), skin color, ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, or mere advocacy on social justice or environmental issues. Consequently, the GOP has largely become an aggregation of ‘get -off-my-lawn’ grievances, used to justify what amounts to political arson.

The essential point Brownstein is calling attention to is that we are in waters none of us have experienced in our lifetimes—a country in which one of the two major parties behaves as if democracy is for suckers. It’s a stunning development and as much a menace as the abominable human being who was indicted (yet again) on Tuesday.

—tjc