From time to time—times widely spaced—, I check in on Fox News for reassurance that the gaslighting of alternative realities and alternative facts continues with brio and gusto. Otherwise, I mainly peruse the independent media—no New York Times or Washington Post for me—for news and commentary. Each outlet—blog or Substack—has its perspective, but all are agreed that a “blue wave” in this fall’s election and another in the 2028 election will rout Republicans at every level, though not, of course, everywhere. Most see a weakening of Trump, a reduced number of Congressional Republican representatives and senators, and a shriveling of the MAGA base. Most see a revitalized Democratic Party blending moderates and progressives.
I see nothing of the sort. I see difficulties prevailing in these elections, with federal forces intimidating voters or disrupting voting, election officials obstructing vote counts, and SCOTUS decisions on election cases invariably favoring the Republican Party and supporting the conduct of the Trump administration. Even if a “blue wave” sweeps out Republican rubbish, I see a great deal of post-election rhetorical frothing and fulminating, but little significant or lasting in the way of the political reforms required to reconstitute a functioning democracy. I see quarrels among different factions of the Democratic Party about diagnoses, priorities, and proposals to remedy the defects in democracy exposed by Trump’s and Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025’s successful attacks on this country’s political infrastructure. I see compromises and kluges which leave matters only incrementally improved. I see Democrats investigating more than legislating, quarreling about punishment and forgiveness, and further alienating a public which wants elected officials to govern, not settle scores (with Republicans and MAGA die-hards who deserve to have their scores settled).
My dour outlook reflects my belief that Trump, administration officials, and Republicans supporting him at all levels of government, have demoralized a majority of Americans and paralyzed them politically. Their disillusionment with Trump which now threatens to overwhelm him, his administration, and his allies results from discomfort at the economic effects of tariffs, inflation, the curtailment of social safety-net benefits, anti-immigration efforts, and his Iran war. Their disappointment at Trump’s failure to deliver on his promises—most had little chance of realization—has been matched by their recognition that the implementation of his promises has been inflationary or destructive. The wall to keep immigrants out was never going to be built, much less funded by Mexico. Tariffs have raised prices, disrupted trade, and devastated farming. ICE raids have impaired operations of farms, hotels, and hospitality and construction industries, among many others. Its anti-immigration raids purporting to target only the “worst of the worst” have swept up not only some illegal immigrants, many guilty of only misdemeanors, including illegal entry, but also many legal immigrants, visa-card holders, naturalized citizens, and even native-born citizens in a gulag of concentration camps euphemistically called detention centers. Trump’s Iran war is an unmitigated disaster. Whether the disillusionment or disappointment of many Americans with Trump and MAGA will motivate them to vote at all or for Democrats is debatable. Whether they will believe Democrats and vote for their promises for what they want—lower prices, health care, better schools, an end to wars, etc.—is also debatable.
Neither the disillusionment nor the disappointment of the disaffected reflects much concern for abstract Constitutional principles or obstruse legal niceties. Without an electorate urging such reforms, reformers will lack the persistent popular support to make significant changes in federal governance and elections. Protesters at ICE facilities or of its actions opposed episodic, not systematic, abuses of democracy. Three, five, eight million marchers in the streets—numbers slowly moving toward that theoretical 3.5% presumably needed to overthrow a government—are unimpressive against an electorate of 175 million registered voters, a voting-age population of 235 million, and a total population of 350 million. Many Americans are tuning out the betrayal of the foundational principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; many are turning a blind eye to the administration’s unprecedented corruption. And at least a third of the electorate supports antidemocratic principles, evident in 15 years of SCOTUS decisions undoing civil rights which promote political and racial equality, also evident in the rush of most formerly Confederate states to destroy the voting rights, thus the political power, of blacks. Many more Americans are privately racist or misogynistic in rejecting the foundational principle that “all men are created equal.” Everywhere, Republicans are doing everything possible to handicap or shrink the franchise, to the disproportionate disadvantage of people of color, women, seniors, and students. The idea that democracy is a fair competition of political parties and their platforms is anathema to them. A defeat in one or two elections will not change their minds and deter them from future attempts at overthrowing American democracy.
Those few protesting systematic abuses of democracy are unlikely to sustain their efforts after election wins in 2026 and 2028. Protests emerge quickly like mushrooms, then disappear as quickly. Occupy Wall Street is an example. They do not last, but, if they last for a while, they dissipate their energies in internal debates and quarrels, and lose their focus. Once Trump is gone, even protesters will seek to return to something like their former quiet lives, not stay with the noisy turbulence of reform. To urge persistence, Thomas Jefferson’s authority is invoked by the saying, wrongly attributed to Jefferson, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Even so, eternal vigilance is in short supply, and the supply is getting shorter as technology distracts us from and disrupts thoughtful efforts to obtain, assess, and act on pertinent information.
Antedating these asocial technologies is the reluctance of most Americans to get involved in politics, whether local, regional, or national. Many give as a reason for not voting the lame self-justification that their votes do not matter; their expression of defeated inflated egoism implies that their individual votes should, but do not, make a difference. At best, they cynically applaud the “rugged individual” who stands up to authority; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington honors their hypocrisy. In most fora, Mr. Smiths get resisted, if not reviled, when they speak truth to power—which is why prophets are not honored in their own country. Of course, if they do not vote and let others self-select themselves to govern, these defeatists become self-defeatists who make little or no contribution to civic life and who surrender some control of their lives to unknown others.
Worse, ever since Trump won the 2024 election, in which Republicans secured dominance in all three branches of the federal government, the nation has witnessed the abject subservience of Congressional Republicans to Trump’s threats. They have let Trump make decisions properly theirs to make. Commentators accuse them of cowardice. No doubt, cowardice explains some of their behavior, but general agreement with Trump’s impulses explains more of it. The same might be said of the electorate at large. Many, if not most, people shy from political discussion or debate, and the perceived threat of possible acrid and angry disagreements, not to mention doxxing and other forms of retribution. They lack the courage of their commitments and the strength to act accordingly. The “land of the free and the home of the brave”—ha.
Let me end this discussion with the fervent hope that I am entirely in the wrong.
