On 9 April 1965, General Ulysses S. Grant generously allowed the surrendering soldiers of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to retain their firearms and their horses. In return, when they and other defeated rebels returned home, they adopted means to resist the freedom of former slaves. Later that year, they formed the Ku Klux Klan, which is known for lynchings, killings, and firebombings; targets were blacks, Catholics, and Jews. Bigots were not exclusive to Dixie, which included Texas, but most of its white population were racial and religious bigots. Before and after the Civil War, poor whites left the South for the Pacific Northwest. One result of this demographic metastasis is proto-fascist groups (e.g., Aryan Nation) mainly in northern Idaho, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, and northern California. (In northern California, the separatist movement to create the state of Jefferson derives its name from Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, not Thomas Jefferson, author of the phrase “all men are created equal” and the US third president.). During the Great Depression, blacks and whites moved north for jobs in the industrial cities in Pennsylvania and in the Upper Midwestern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan.
Another result of Dixie’s sustained racism was shifts in southern political allegiances. After the Civil War, blacks aligned with the anti-slavery Republican Party; whites, with the anti-reconstructionist Democratic Party. But, a century later, when the national Democratic Party, with support from some northern Republicans, passed the various civil rights laws in the mid-1960s, this political orientation reversed. Blacks transferred to the Democratic Party, and white racists switched to and were welcomed by the Republicans. In his 1968 and 1972 campaigns for the presidency, Richard Nixon adopted a “southern strategy” to win their votes. Today, the Republican Party is indelibly biased against people not white and Christian (Jews get a pass for the time being). Trump has unabashedly encouraged bigotry against people of color, non-Christians (mainly Muslims), women, and those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer, asexual, etc. During his two administrations, Congressional Republicans have endorsed Trump and his administration’s assault on democratic norms and principles, the Constitution, and the rule of law. Most of them are not the cowards whom Democrats take them for. If they were, they would be leaving Congress in even larger numbers, but most remain. Although many find Trump, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and others offensive, most do not find their policies, practices, and prejudices contrary to their own and to their desires for total political control. Much the same might be said of Trump’s MAGA followers, though they are far more receptive to his vulgarity, vitriol, and violence.
When Trump dies in office or otherwise finally leaves it, this rump of unregenerate enemies of democracy will remain. His 77.3 million voters and probably that many more in favor of him constitute a considerable portion—probably about 40%—of the population and the electorate. Political troglodytes on social media and in the ranks of billionaires will continue to rouse these political regressives throughout the country. They live everywhere among us, in neighborhoods and families. So the question is: if the country is not to remain perpetually vulnerable to fascist subversion and domination, what to do?
My question, what to do, is a difficult one, and I lay no claim to the only or the best answer. Mine begins with distinguishing between two groups. One is the group of Republican officials who have served Trump and his administration; the other is the group of MAGA or low-information, low-intelligence, or little-interested followers with various inane reasons or none at all for following Trump. I am sure that, after a “blue wave” defeat, the members of both groups will remain aggrieved and will be sullen, hostile, or vengeful.
A restored democratic government seeking to recover from the effects of a dozen years of Republican misrule must seek total transparency about what happened, must insist upon the maximum accountability, and must take steps to prevent a recurrence. All three options must lead to the political neutralization of those who served Trump and his administration, whether in or allied with it. First, the government must vigorously prosecute all officials and their staffs who can be charged with federal or state crimes; it must not accept any plea agreements which would eliminate incarceration after conviction. (If the little fish want to go to jail and not testify against the big fish who will scorn them as suckers, let them.) The government must seek the disbarment of every lawyer who signed or supported government misconduct. Second, the government must discharge or bar from government employment all DHS, ICE, CBP, DOJ, and FBI personnel who have acted in immigration or law enforcement operations. They must be banished, directly or indirectly through private employers, from government contracts. Third, all private prisons or privately-run facilities holding federal detainees for deportation, and their personnel, from CEO’s to administrators, must be aggressively investigated, maximally charged, vigorously prosecuted, with plea deals or settlements ruled out, and banned from any government contracts.
Simultaneously, the government must address the fact that Trump’s supporters tolerate, favor, or embrace both fascist beliefs and behavior, and, underlying both, bigotry about the superiority of some group of people over other groups: whites over people of color, Christians over Muslims and Jews, men over women, straights over LGBTQQA+, etc. The government must also understand that their bigotry reflects, not a lack of information, but a personal need to believe themselves superior to others. They may have any amount of information about others but believe others morally inferior. The government might try persuasion by public programs which question why they think themselves superior to others because they are white or male or Christian, why being white or male or Christian is the basis of superiority; and, without assuming its superiority, why Christianity is superior to other religions. In that effort, it must restore DEI policies and programs.
But government cannot do everything; indeed, it cannot do most of what needs to be done. Decent, democratically inclined citizens must do their part in their everyday interactions with Trump supporters. Their interactions will require moral courage to overcome their reluctance to dispute their political opinions and disapprove of their prejudices. Politics aside, many of Trump’s supporters are nice people. But decent people must question just how nice these go-alongs with Republican officials are. After all, they tolerated, approved, or enabled efforts to curtail or eliminate everyone’s constitutional rights; to tell everyone what to read or not read, what to think or not think, what to say or not say, what to do or not do; and to limit everyone’s freedoms to live, love, and labor—and vote—as they see fit. Decent people must fortify themselves with the fact that these nice people meant to undo our democracy, ruin this country, and harm the people in it, or did not care about this undoing, ruin, and harm.
If America is to remain—if it has been—“the land of the free and the home of the brave,” decent, democratically inclined citizens must find the courage to put the right thing politically over the easy or comfortable thing personally or socially. Otherwise, if we pretend that a “blue wave” will teach fascists a lesson, we shall be right back where we started, with them more determined and better prepared to seize power in the future. Whatever we do, it must be effective and persistent. We must not relent; they must relent and sincerely repent, or remain political pariahs. Kumbaya will not stop them.
A Note on Election Fraud
Decades ago, at a special fraternity luncheon, one of my brothers took a heaping plate of food and then ate little of it. Another brother, in reproach, commented at his waste of food when millions of Chinese were starving. To which the former tartly replied, “name one.”
Which is the proper reply to Trump sympathizers who claim voter fraud, mostly by illegal immigrants to explain Trump’s defeat in 2020 and Democratic victories in elections since. (By the way, Trump’s objection to immigrants is invariably racist, to those of color, not to white ones from, say, Norway or South Africa.) There is no way to prove a negative—here, the non-existence of voter fraud—; in truth, we must admit that there is some voter fraud. But it is very rare, at the level of not even a handful of ballots cast by unqualified people among millions of ballots. Ironically, a few years ago, when Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, notorious for railing against voter fraud, identified a single case of voter fraud, the perpetrator turned out to be a Republican. We piously declare that every vote counts, but no federal election has been decided by five votes. According to an AI summary on Wikipedia, “The smallest margin of victory in the national popular vote for a U.S. presidential election occurred in 1880, when Republican James A. Garfield defeated Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock by a mere 7,368 votes.”
So, for all the hoopla about the ballots of unqualified voters cancelling out the ballots of qualified voters, the effect of this problem is trivial compared to the disastrous and notably Republican-favoring consequences of legislation (the Save Act or the MEGA Act) to achieve ballot purity. Moreover, the idea that millions of legitimate voters should be hindered by identification requirements trying to achieve such an unattainable goal is a pretty good definition of unreasonableness, if not insanity.
The claim of voter fraud can be proven in the ordinary way: identify the illegitimate voters. There is no need to spoil Thanksgiving dinner by pounding the table and shouting back and forth about voter fraud. Just ask your “crazy uncle” claiming voter fraud to cite specifics. Advise him to contact any state attorney general, secretary of state, or clerk of public records for the names of those charged, tried, and convicted of voter fraud. Suggest that he start with red states (he will think blue states complicit in voter fraud). Give him until the following Thanksgiving dinner to collect this information (i.e., put up or shut up).
