You could almost thank Donald Trump for lessons about democracy. It’s almost as if he set out four years ago to expose our complacency and naivete and teach us about the vulnerability of our system to the impulses of one man of a certain sort.
But that it would come to this, that only two months from the election the majority of Americans would be seriously concerned that this one man who is impatient of government and its annoying processes, who has gotten away with so much, will get away with wrecking the election, perhaps derailing the system of government in which the election plays such a major role. Polls you can look up online suggest exactly that.
Many of us are, and not without reason, worrying that we may be right now experiencing that thing we have always attributed to countries we’ve considered lesser: a naked grab for power.
Trump opponents have assumed that all that he’s gotten away with would be the very reason he would only be around for four years. He’s got so much against him: suspicious refusal to make public his tax records, damning books by former employees , innumerable counts of sexist and racist behavior, incessant, demonstrable lying, all-but-Senate vote conviction, his still ongoing insensitive and ineffective handling of the pandemic, what sure looks like a deliberate attempt to make h is contemptuous criticism of the postal service a self-fulfilling prophecy by sabotage the mail-in ballot option he has opposed made necessary by the virus by appointing a Postmaster General who would dismantle key functions asap.
Etc.
(It’s hard not to sound like the Declaration of Independence listing grievances against King George. )
Surely all these things he’s gotten away with will send his historically low approval rating even lower, and he will lose in a landslide. But looked at another way: he’s gotten away with so much, who’s going to stop him from getting away with overriding, setting aside, refusing to abide by the election?
Democracy didn’t see Donald Trump coming. But here he is.
Can he get away with using the White House as backdrop for his campaign in the convention?Isn’ t that illegal? But no one made a move to stop him
He orders certain military units to violently clear peaceful protesters from a photo op and quell protesters . Can he do that? Apparently. It does make one wonder if he might resort to military means if necessary to stay in power.
Judging by the past four years, We seem, in fact, helpless to stop him.
Remember Trump while campaigning claiming that he could get away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue? He obviously got a kick out of that idea. He obviously gets off on getting away with things.
According to news stories, two members of Congress recently asked the Pentagon to provide reassurance that it will not provide military help to keep Trump in office. The request is itself unprecedented and not reassuring.
We could all use some reassurance about now.
Are our fears alarmist or born of a new realism about the vulnerability of democracy?
We could use some credible reassurance that we are not as helpless as we fear, that our democratic institutions will after all be able withstand the onslaught of one man’s ambition, that all hell is not about to break loose . We could use a believable explanation of why we shouldn’t worry about the big run on guns and ammo we’ve been reading about and maybe go out and get some for ourselves.
But from what quarter could such reassurance come? Trump himself has refused to say he would abide by election results. You can almost hear the subtext: who’s going to make me?
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