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James Quinn's avatar

Back near the dawn of democracy, an old and (in an age when male beauty was the stuff of some of the finest sculptures ever created) famously ugly ex-sculptor would sit in the Athenian agora and try to make those who came to him learn be clear about their terminology and their foundational beliefs in such areas as religion, friendship, courage, honor, the law. He enjoyed pricking the self-inflated balloons of those who assumed themselves to be experts, and in doing so often incited mirth in his younger followers and chagrin and rage in those so challenged.

Athenian democracy at the time was not like ours. It was far more personal and direct without all the representative layers we’ve created to try to protect us from extremes.

At the same time, the essence of democracy was already evident - that it only worked as well as it might if its participants understood the reasoning behind it and how it was designed to work. Even then, of course it was an experiment - not a finished product. Indeed, one of the hardest parts of it was just that - not only was it an experiment, it had to remain ongoing. At the point at which its participants believed the process finally set in stone, it would fail.

It worked best if reason prevailed over passion, except the passion to preserve it. It worked best when the value of individual rights was balanced with the needs of the community. It worked best when its participants understood that freedom does not come without an equal measure or responsibility for one’s actions. It worked best when its participants understood that it was unavoidably messy and often quite slow and inefficient. It worked best when ‘we the people’ could together find, amidst whatever differences we felt divided us, enough of the courage, the honesty, the understanding, the tolerance, the compassion, the wisdom, the humor, and the sheer common sense to rule ourselves from the bottom up without allowing our differences to tear us apart.

This is what I find so hard to understand about today’s Republican Party, and why, while I still try to engage with those who support Trump, I am increasingly unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of trying to understand where they are coming from. It is because by en large, and led by the example of Donald Trump, they exhibit none of the essential characteristics I’ve listed above.

As Dr. Eisenger notes, many of them in their personal relationships may be quite personable, supportive, understanding, caring, generous. But to those they believe to be 'outside the pale’ of Trumpism or even old time Republicanism, they show none of that. The Democratic Party has some of the same problems, but to no extent whatsoever to the same degree (spoiler, I’m an Independent - have been all my voting life)

Part of the problem, to me, is our ossified binary political party system, a situation our founders feared but they then themselves initiated. Every time I hear or listen to someone identifying him or herself as a Republican or a Democrat instead of as an American, I cringe. Because if we are not all Americans first and all that other stuff at least second. we cannot long maintain this most crucial of all experiments in human government.

Another part is the woeful ignorance on the part of so many of us about our Constitution and the blueprint it created. It would be bad enough if this were a problem just among voters, but when it is also a problem among our legislative representatives it is far worse And when it happens in the presidency it becomes eventually destructive of everything we were designed to be.

Well. I’ve gone on long enough. As an American of nearly 80, my time in that most fortunate status is running out. I am the product of what most would call an ‘elite’ education. I’ve been at times a soldier, a merchant seaman, a construction worker, and yes of course, a paper boy on a bicycle, rain, snow, or shine, and I’ve taught our history to elementary school student for just over 40 years. In my classrooms I have always striven to tell our story as fully and honestly as I could, but always with the optimism of a true believer in the promise of our founding. To my own chagrin, I would find it hard to be so were I still in that classroom.

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Leo Francis's avatar

This seems to indicate a high level of partisanship: “Simply put, they see the U.S.A. in disrepair, and don’t believe that V.P. Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party can restore and renovate what’s broken. They are so disillusioned, so distraught, and so distrustful of political and social institutions (Congress, courts, media, political parties, schools), that they are amenable to rupturing those institutional bedrocks in the hopes that something, anything, replaces them.”

As has been well-reported in numerous publications, the USA is currently in good shape. Our post-pandemic recovery may be the best in the world. Obviously, our situation is not perfect; but it never has been and never will be.

So what is it about the current moment in our history that leaves these people feeling “so disillusioned, so distraught, and so distrustful of political and social institutions … that they are amenable to rupturing those institutional bedrocks”?

The only explanation I can think of is that they are responding to rhetoric, not reality. And we all do the same thing to some extent: believe in our preferred (and usually tribal) narratives even when actual evidence refutes those narratives.

But the people this writer mentions sound as if they are very specifically repeating Trump’s talking points. Trump has, of course, been insisting against all evidence to the contrary that our country is in a historically hopeless situation.

So the question is not just why would these people believe him, but why would they believe him when their own lived experience ostensibly shows his claims to be categorically false?

There may not be any simple answer to that question. It may involve Fox News, social media, lifelong political affiliations, or many other factors. Human nature may simply be too easy to manipulate.

We ultimately depend upon good character as the ultimate “institutional bedrock.” And when a prominent leader such as Trump abandons that essential element of civic society, it’s shocking how many people he’s able to intimidate and manipulate. That’s one of the great revelations of our times.

Many would find that observation to be condescending. But in that case they really should be able to explain how and why they embrace a demagogue’s narrative of doom and gloom in an era of (relative) peace and prosperity.

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