The conventional wisdom is that the conduct of Trump and administration officials can be, and some day will be, dealt with by holding them accountable. Which means investigations, prosecutions, convictions, and incarceration or other penalties. The intended effect is a purge of the body politic by ending fascist authoritarianism and restoring democracy and justice under the Constitution and the rule of law. Regrettably, although accountability is both necessary and desirable, the dream of such a purgation is naïve because it is anti-historical.
Since its founding, the American populace has been politically divided into three factions, their size and intensity varying over time: one approving, one disapproving, one variable in its allegiance to the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence: legal and political equality of all people, freedom of choice in living and equity in opportunity in that choice, and government by the consent of the governed. The first faction fought the American Revolution, with some incidental assistance from the third faction; the second faction was the Tories.
Four score and seven years later, that second faction consisted largely, though not entirely, of the people of or sympathetic to the Confederacy. The persistence of that faction is notable because of the success of American democracy and the corresponding vitality of the American economy and society. The second faction never gives up.
On 9 April 1865, 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. When they and other defeated rebels returned home, they repaid Union generosity by restricting the freedom of former slaves. In December, they formed the Ku Klux Klan, whose lynchings, killings, and firebombings targeted blacks, Catholics, and Jews. When Reconstruction ended 22 years later, the former states of the Confederacy enacted Jim Crow laws of segregation and deprivation of social benefits and political rights. Whites spread their bigotry when they left Dixie after the Civil War by the Oregon Trail for the Pacific Northwest and migrated during the Depression to industrial cities in the Upper Midwest and western Pennsylvania.
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 Democratic Party, with support from some northern Republicans, passed the various civil rights laws in the mid-1960s, these political allegiances reversed. Blacks transferred to the Democratic Party, and white racists switched to and were welcomed by the Republican Party. 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. Trump has encouraged and enlarged this bigotry to include not only blacks, but also other people of color, non-Christians (mainly Muslims; Jews get a pass for the time being), women, and those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer, questioning, and asexual. 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; they are careerists protecting their professional livelihood. Although many have found Trump, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and others offensive, most do not find most of their policies, practices, and prejudices contrary to their political views and to their desire for political dominance. 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 millions of voters and millions of non-voting supporters constitute a considerable portion of the electorate and the population. Political troglodytes on social media and in the ranks of billionaires will continue to rouse these political regressives throughout the country. So the question is: if the country is not to remain perpetually vulnerable to the threat of a newly emergent autocratic leader, fascist subversion, and domination, what to do?
One answer 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, even in the event of a “blue wave” defeat, the members of both groups will remain aggrieved, sullen, hostile, or vengeful. Such was the response of the Confederates, who idolized Robert L. Lee as the hero of the “Lost Cause”; such will be the response of those who idolize Donald J. Trump.
To counter this reaction, a restored Democratic government must pursue justice to recover from the effects of a dozen years of Republican misrule, It must ensure total transparency about what happened, insist upon accountability, and take steps to prevent a recurrence. These steps must lead to the political neutralization of those who served Trump and his administration, whether in or allied with it. First, the government must investigate and prosecute all officials and their staffs who can be charged with federal crimes, violations of their oaths of office, and dereliction of official duties; it must not accept plea agreements which would eliminate incarceration after conviction. (If little fish want to go to jail by not testifying against big fish who will scorn them as suckers, let them.) The government must seek the disbarment of every lawyer who signed legal opinions or supported legal actions contrary to the Constitution, laws, or legal ethics. Second, the government must discharge or bar from government employment DHS, ICE, CBP, DOJ, and FBI personnel who have acted in illegal arrests, detentions, and deportations of immigrants. They must be banished from prime and sub contracts with government agencies or subcontracts. Third, CEOs, managers, and staff of private companies involved in holding, transporting, or deporting federal detainees 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 two interrelated facts. The first is 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 launch and maintain public programs which challenge bigotry of all kinds. It must reform institutionalized misinformation and restore DEI policies and programs.
The second is that Trump and Republican allies have made political war on Democrats. He has treated Democrats as “an enemy within.” They infringed upon the Constitutional rights of Democrats, targeted prominent Democrats for vindictive prosecutions, withheld funds from Democratic states or cities, occupied Democratic cities with ICE, CBP, or military units, and hindered or disenfranchised groups which predominantly vote Democratic: minorities, seniors, students, handicapped, and women. Because Republicans have supported him in his efforts, they have identified themselves as anti-democratic (lower-case d) types who believe that government rests on the consent of and serves only some, not all, of the governed. They act on the assumption that Democrats are not created politically equal to Republicans.
One way to answer Republican efforts to diminish the rights of Democrats and to undermine democracy is to adapt the example of post-war Germany. Since the end of World War II, its government has outlawed the Nazi, communist, and similar parties. Yet Germany is regarded as a democracy. Perhaps, one step for the continued success of democracy in America might be a ban on the Republican Party and associated parties and organizations. In fact, by an extant law enacted in 1954, the United States outlawed the Communist Party as a conspiracy to overthrow the government. Though untested in court and liable to rejection on free speech grounds, such a law based on conduct might more likely pass muster. Legal cases brought on unsupported allegations of fraud might be evidence of conspiracy. Actions impeding voting or shrinking the franchise in the name of fighting fraud might be regarded as acts to overthrow the government. For now, citizens should vote against all Republicans at all levels of government. Denying them political power is what they deserve for trying to deny political power to others.
Nevertheless, government cannot do everything; indeed, it cannot do much of what needs to be done. Democratically inclined citizens must do their part in their everyday interactions with Trump or MAGA supporters. Their interactions will require moral courage to overcome their reluctance to dispute their political opinions and disapprove of their prejudices. This task is not an easy one, for, politics aside, many Trump’s supporters are nice people. But such citizens must ask themselves just how nice they and Republican sympathizers with autocracy are. They have tolerated, approved, or enabled efforts to curtail or eliminate Democrats’s—ultimately, 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. Such citizens 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,” 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”—a Union victory over the Confederacy, so to speak—will teach racists or 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.
