There will be a lot of retrospective columns appearing here and there today, although oddly, our local paper didn't have one. Many of these, like the two I already posted, will warn that American democracy is in peril.
And indeed it is.
On January 6, 2021 an insurrection attempting to prevent the certification of the Electoral College vote occurred resulting in the storming of the chambers of the Senate and the House for the first time since the War of 1812. The Confederate battle flag flew in those halls, something that symbol of racist hatred had not ever managed to come close to doing in the Civil War. Members of the national legislature and the Vice President feared for their lives while, as we now know, President Trump ignored pleas for his supporters to stand down.
We further now know, thanks to the January 6 Committee, that plans to steal the election, effectively mount a coup, in fact occurred, but they were undertaken by Donald Trump, not the Democratic Party. The Democrats, who as we noted in an earlier recent item, had grown comfortable with forty plus years of court forced social change, and therefore non-democratic rule of a type themselves, are not wholly free of blame, but there had never been in the country's history an effort to absolutely impose the rule by a President that had twice lost the popular vote and then lost the electoral vote in his second run for office.
Moreover, there's an ongoing effort right now to put Donald Trump back in office in 2024 which is now so pronounced that he himself may no longer have that much of a choice on running.
That Trump ever was elected in the first instance is a sign of how ill American politics have become. In any earlier time, nobody with Trump's character would ever have received the nomination of a major political party, let alone be elected. The fact that he was remains a serious sign of American decline.
A serious sign of our ongoing state of peril is that the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Al Smith, Dwight Eisenhower, and the like now is no longer committed to democracy at all on a national level. On a local level it continues to struggle somewhat, but in places like that where I live the primary election will effectively be the general election and the only issue will be how blindly loyal to Trump and his lies a candidate is.
Some are predicting the end of American democracy.
A very erudite commentator I heard didn't predict that, but rather something like a new Compromise of 1877 coming into effect, which I think is probably a more accurate prediction of this type. For those who do not recall that, that was the political compromise in which Republicans of the 1870s proved willing to sell their souls and their loyalty to democracy and gave up on it in the South, thereby leading to nearly a century of highly imperfect elections in the South. Some have noted, or claimed, that because of this, the US wasn't a real democracy until the 1960s, and that it threatens to become a fake one again.
I think, as noted, that there's a real chance that something like that will occur. The GOP will facture into two parties, which it nearly already has, and the Democrats will as well. Only in the really contested regions will issues like a person's unthinking loyalty to Trump be an issue. In areas like Wyoming, it will be assumed and not even mentioned except in the apple pie and motherhood sort of way..[1]
That's not my prediction, however.
I'll be frank that I am extremely worried. I think the chance that the Trumpist pull off a coup in 2024 is pretty high, and that this would in fact rocket the United States into second nation status. Our run as the premier global democracy will be over, and historically it will have proven to be surprisingly brief. The American Century would have been just about that, in real terms.
But in spite of that fear, I'll weigh in with some cautious optimism it won't happen.
My first prediction here is that slowly, slowly, things are turning. The news from the January 6 Committee is getting out. Of note, political wind sniffer Ted Cruz, whose role in trying to position himself as the Trump heir apparent post insurrection led to his post insurrection effort to affect a coup, came out on the anniversary of the event and stated:
We are approaching a solemn anniversary this week, and it is an anniversary of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol, where we saw the men and women of law enforcement demonstrate incredible courage, incredible bravery, risk their lives to defend the men and women who served in this Capitol. We are grateful for that courage, we appreciate the selfless sacrifice of the men and women who keep us safe.
Those are admirable sentiments indeed, even if Cruz's own post insurrection role was despicable. But Cruz is pretty good at switching sails rapidly, and the fact that the former primary opponent of Trump, and then Trump acolyte, suddenly is throwing rocks at insurrectionists is telling. He knows something we don't, and the 1/6 Committee was hinting all last week that there are some real bombshells out there.
The fact that Donald Trump cancelled his planned speech for this day is telling as well. Something is coming.
So far, Trump loyalist have proven immune to the news and even Trump efforts to change the story on anything, so those who claim whatever it is won't matter have a good point. Robert E. Lee refused to march in step after the Civil War at Washington & Lee College, James Longstreet became a Republican, and Pickett called Lee "the man who destroyed my division", none of which kept Southerners from elevating the effort to keep men enslaved into the memory of "The Lost Cause".
It took another crisis, the Spanish American War, and then a second, World War One, to really get over those events, and it's certainly not impossible we might get another one as well that would serve the same purpose. In modern times, it seems events come much quicker. China or Russia, for example, could easily provide the unifying emergency that puts Trump in the dust. We'll see, but if I were the Chinese, I'd be weighing my options for invading Taiwan now and trying to determine if they're better before 2024, or or after.
Anyhow, while much of what is in these electronic pages is not very optimistic, I'm going to note some predictions here and a collapse of American democracy will not be among them.
First of all, I'm going to predict that this summer, Liz Cheney prevails in the Wyoming primary over Harriet Hageman.
By that time, whatever is lurking ready to explode in the 1/6 Committee halls will be out. Hageman so far has been able to semi camouflage her campaign's sole point being loyalty to Trump, albeit not much, but whatever it is, by that time, will be out and wholly unavoidable. She'll be forced into determining whether Ride for the Brand is the same thing as Loyalty Is My Honor.[2] and won't really have a good answer for that question.
Moreover, it's likely to turn out that real native Wyomingites and those immigrants from the neighboring states were never as Trumpy as the COP county committees. Indeed, I heard one immigrant from one of our neighboring states who had been a Republican office holder refer to the local GOP as "batshit crazy" even before the election, showing how dissent was already there. My guess is that Cheney will win, and not just by a little bit, but not as much as before.
I hope a solid Democrat runs, although I'm not optimistic about it. Wyoming has become a one party state, and that's not a good thing
My next prediction will be that in 2024 voting for Trump won't be an issue, and it won't be an issue for one of two reasons.
The less likely reason is that he'll be indited on criminal charges.
This appears to be likely in New York, in Federal court. Beyond that, I don't think it's unlikely that the January 6 Committee will refer over charges to the US Attorneys Office.
That will be a nightmare for the Biden Administration, a nightmare in part inflicted by the country's utter prior failures to indite Richard Nixon, which should have happened, and to fully punish the Southern insurrectionists of 1860-65, which also should have happened. But I don't think the country will actually allow a third the King Can Do No Wrong event go by when the deposed monarch is vying for reinstatement. If charges are referred, he'll be indited, and convicted. By 2024 he may be in prison.
But I also don't think that's the reason he won't be running.
I don't think he'll be running for the same reason Joe Biden won't be running.
Both men are ancient. Biden is older, and looks infirm and ill, but Trump looks bloated and like a man packing around a ton of makeup.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Psalm 90:10..[3]
I'm not predicting, and certainly not wishing, any disaster upon either men, and most definately not a man made one. Unlike the shockingly high, but still minority, percentage of Americans who now apparently feel that violence for political reasons is sometimes justified, I do not..[4] I'm not keen on violence of any kind.
Rather, what I'm saying is that the reality of things is that men past pretty much age 30, yes 30, can find that they have a seat on the barque over the River Styx at any time.
Now, men who have obtained threescore years and ten, or more, may be in fantastic shape. Some have active minds and rigorous bodies. Indeed, one fellow resident of this state I follow appears to have both. I've seen ranchers and cowhands who still worked pretty much full days into their 70s. There are exceptions.
But those exceptions often appear, well, exceptional. They've made the effort to be active and beyond that none of the ones that come to mind offhand, the problematic Éamon de Valera, and the exceptional Winston Churchill, aside, occupied stressful positions until they took their seats on that passage.
And even at that, the comparisons are notable. De Valera remained thin and vigorous looking up until the end, even though he went blind. Churchill, weight and drinking aside, remained remarkably able, although he was frankly failing towards the end. Trump looks like a man who is about to have a heart attack or stroke any day, and the pressures upon him are about to get considerably more pronounced. Biden looks a bit dottered in spite, no doubt, of efforts to keep him from appearing so.
So while it is a grim prediction, my guess is that the scythe that takes us all, naturally, will have taken them by then. Biden, who has lived a tragic life in many ways, but not one of excess, will probably simply pass, Trump, who has lived a life of excess, is more likely to go by heart attack or stroke.
That would mean that in 2024, of course, Kamala Harris would be the incumbent President. But as is so often the case with Vice Presidents, she's failed to secure a following and I doubt she would even after being the first female President. I'm not sure if she'd even run. I do think it more likely that a less disliked female candidate, Amy Klobuchar, would run.
I also think that Ted Cruz would run as the self-appointed political adopted son of Donald Trump, and fail to gain the nomination. I don't think it would be impossible that Liz Cheney would secure the nomination.
And a race like that is the one we will see in 2024. A likeable female Democrat against either a stern female Republican conservative or a widely disliked, consummate Republican Senator. The first race would be difficult to predict the outcome of. Cruz, who is easy to detest, would lose in such a race.
Either way, the Trump era will pass with Trump pretty quickly. Political movements centered on one man fail when the man isn't there, even if they had some larger structure. The Progressive Party died when Theodore Roosevelt left it. In no way comparable to Roosevelt's Progressive Party, but as another example of a movement based on one man, Francoist political parties bit the dust after Franco died, in spite of having ruled Spain with no opposition for forty or so years. Fascists remain in Italy, or rather "Neo-fascists", but they've never seriously threatened to rule the country following the demise of Mussolini. Millions of Germans voted for Hitler, followed him into war, and joined the Nazi Party during Hitler's rule of Germany, but efforts to revive any form of Nazism following the war have been a complete failure.
Indeed, the more a movement is not only based on a man, but a demagogue, the more likely it is to pass. Some people admire Huey Long today, but most people regard him as sort of a comic buffoon. And when politicians finally fall from grace, finding anyone who will admit to supporting them is a difficult task. Formerly popular causes, when they become unpopular, are ones in which, seemingly, there were never any members.
Healing from the attempted coup is going to be difficult. There can be no doubt about it. But my guess is that the election of 2024 will play out the way noted, and the healing will begin even before that. The Mitt Romney wing of the GOP will come back out of hiding as the Trumpites deny that they ever were for the man. The McConnell's will pick up and move on in the direction they were always going in, and indeed already are.
Some of the legitimate concerns of populists will be permanent insertions into the GOP, but the GOP will have to start reckoning, and soon, with the fact that it is a minority party and becoming more of one every day. And indeed that's the ultimate irony of Trumpism. It might just, if it keeps on, awaken a tidal ave of Democratic heavily left wing opposition that's already there but not doing much.
Wider Republicans have always known this, but have not acted wisely. Democratic disorganization has allowed them to cower. In reality, they're being given just a little bit of a breathing room to act. But they obviously can't or won't as long as Trump seems to command a personality cult.
As noted, while not wishing ill on anyone, the American belief that we all live forever and in perfect health is a lie in and of itself. Death takes everyone and nobody as old as Trump or Biden really has that much longer to live. Nature is the ultimate arbiter of everything.
And when that comes, naturally, as it will, and soon, maybe some of the grip of this era, will be released. It probably will be.
The nation won't be healed overnight, but the turning of a corner has already started. Democracy won't die, and it certainly won't die with Trump or Biden. Having gone through this crisis the real question will be what politics will look like as we emerge from it. Will we have some version of the Compromise of 1877? Will legitimate populist grievances be taken into account so that a new version of Trump does not arise, or so that populist do not become a dangerous underground fifth column. Will the Democratic left have had enough and use its its majority to reform the country into more of a quasi parliamentary, more democratic and less republican state? Could all of this happen.
All questions remaining to be answered, but the death of American democracy will be one of the things that will not occur.
Footnotes.
1. On that, it might be more akin to Republican citations to being for "family" and the like. It may be time, when candidates start talking about issues like this, to see what their own situation is. Are they living the "family" life themselves, for example. Do they really hunt, fish, etc., if they cite those things.
"Values" candidates are common, but the point here, are they exhibiting those values in their daily lives?
2. Loyalty is my honor", as earlier discussed here, was the motto of the SS.
3. Those are, of course, 70 years of age and 80 years of age.
4. If the civil war that some are predicting comes about, well my region can count on me sitting it out. I'm not going to take up arms to shoot at anybody in an internecine spat. I guess that lets me know how I would have reacted if I'd been, let's say, a Texan in 1860-65.
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