American Democracy – Our American Experiment

The Lure of Dictatorship

To be a citizen of a republic really is a hassle. Seriously, I’m not joking. So much is expected of you. I mean, think of it. First, you are expected to stay informed about various issues that affect you, your fellow citizens, and your country as a whole. Not only are you expected to do this, but you are expected to make time for it on your own, and unless you’re one of those people who ‘works well without direct supervision,’ then it’s not going to happen.

Most people would not only have to be led to the water of staying informed, but they’s also have to be made to drink it, and republics that function on a set of democratic processes aren’t really set up to force people drink information. Republics of this nature are set up to make the water available for people to drink, but the decision to either drink the water of information and knowledge, or to sit, thirsty, in the parched dryness of ignorance is theirs to make.

Second, not only are you expected to stay informed, but you’re also expected to stay informed with the truth. That means that you’re expected to pull your face out of your algorithm directed social media apps for a few seconds (yeah, good luck), and look something up. Never mind that the pervasive internet and the evolving G networks everywhere make that the easiest task, ever. Forget it. People don’t care about the truth, because the truth sucks. The truth means they have to be truly awake in some manner, other than just walking through life with a fake smile on their faces, and see the world as it really is. If people do that, then, well, there go all of the smiles, fake or not.

Third, and this is the worst part, ever. Not only are citizens of a republic expected to stay informed with the truth, but they’re also expected to vote. I know, I feel like screaming and crying when I thank about that, too. “Voting? Are you serious? Nah, that’s not happening. Vote? Are you crazy? Don’t you know that Jesus died on the cross so that we could just hand all that shit over to god? Damned atheists and your voting!”

“Look, can’t we just get somebody in office that’ll just take care of all of this, so that I don’t have to worry about it? I mean, I don’t want to use the term ‘benevolent dictator,’ but… Well, hell, let’s just call a spade a spade and go there; say it out loud. Can’t we just get some benevolent dictator in the White House who will make it all happen, so I don’t have to worry about it?”

That short monologue, unfortunately, is all too common within the American electorate, and it is that attitude which may pose the greatest threat to this republic. Humans have a love of republicanism that functions on the democratic process, but don’t want to accept responsibility for their own governance. They don’t want to stay informed with the truth. They don’t want to maintain anything even resembling a meaningful understanding of the issues confronting their country and the world. They don’t even want to vote.

In the short term, individuals like trump come and go and their influence on this republic rises, then fades. Over the long term, though, it is dictatorship itself that draws people into its web, where it waits, like the venomous spider it is. The lure of dictatorship lies in the apparent ease of existence it offers the individual. Yet we all know that this apparent ease is merely an illusion; it is the veil of lies that conceals the evil that lies within. Fortunately, this veil is not opaque, and in fact, its transparency is its greatest flaw. Dictatorships have this lure within them, and yet its transparency of what it really entails for the individual and the nation, even those within the dominant racial/ethnic/religious/sexually oriented, and gender identifying group (dominant group), is what makes it so abhorrent.

To be the minion of a dictatorship is easy, it really is, provided, of course, that you are a member of the dominant group in your country. If you are, then all you have to do is nothing. Consciously and actively do nothing, even when you see injustice meted out to people of minority or marginalized ethnic, racial, sexually oriented, or gender identifying groups, do nothing. The state will take care to insure that you are cared for and protected against what it sees as anything infringing on your quiet, non-political life. For many people, this ‘doing nothing’ is easy, but for the rest of us it is incredibly difficult, and this difficulty is one of the factors that first lead to the rise of republicanism as a form of government in the first place.

Over time, all governments develop institutions that help propel their existence. This is especially true of both monarchies and republics, much more so than civil and military dictatorships. Monarchies develop institutions based around the blood line of a particular set of people, and if it is what is known as a ‘constitutional monarchy,’ then two parallel sets of institutions develop; one protects the privileges of the noble class, and the other protects the rights of the monarchy’s subjects. Republics, on the other hand, develop institutions based upon their body of laws, their nation’s constitutional rights, and the liberties and responsibilities of the individual.

The self-propelling institutions developed by civil and military dictatorships are based upon and centered around a single, charismatic figure, and are designed to keep that person and their inner circle in power for as long as possible. Since these persons are rarely in power more than twenty years, thirty years at the most, the institutions designed to propel their rule find it difficult to take root in the national psyche. This is what makes North Korea such an anomaly; the institutionalization of the rule of the Kim family over the decades has come to resemble an absolute monarchy more than a dictatorship.

So there is this constant, dual, opposing, pull on the individual. There is the desire for republicanism and democracy, but a republic that functions on the democratic process requires constant attention of the citizens to maintain it in a healthy state. Dictatorship, on the other hand possesses its lure because of its myth of the easy life in which the individual doesn’t have to maintain the political system that governs them. The system, the myth says, is self sustaining. All the citizen has to do is nothing. Consciously, actively, and intentionally do nothing, because if any citizen attempts to intervene with the state on behalf of others, that person will find themselves to be a target of the state, and that will not end well for the individual.

The vast, vast, vast majority of those people who secretly long for the establishment of a dictatorship in the United States understand that such a dream neither can, nor should, ever become a reality, because they know that it would mean the destruction of everything they hold dear in this world in terms of their country and what it has tried to stand for in this world. They have these fleeting desires for the benevolent dictator when they see inefficiency and ineffectiveness in their government’s efforts to right wrongs. They dream, periodically, of the dictator because they see unintentional, yet unfixed, waste of the people’s tax revenue. They dream of the dictator because someone once told them that “Well, at least under Hitler, the trains ran on time,” and they believed it without trying to find out if it was true. They believed it and purposely hid from their own minds their internal knowledge of the suffering dictators bring with them wherever they go.

Then there are those people for whom dreams of a dictatorship in America are not fleeting, because creating a dictatorship in the United States of America is their dream. They are the people who actively seek ways to subvert our democratic institutions on a daily basis in an attempt to sweep our republic into the thrash can of history. They are the people who live within the realms of white supremacy, white nationalism, and white christian nationalism. They are the people who hoard assault rifles and study how to bring down large areas of our electrical power grid as they wait for the start of their “shootin’ war.” They have always been among us, but have decided, since the political rise of donald trump, that their time to come out of the shadows is now. They actively attempt to recruit our young people into their ranks through their right-wing media outlets, the algorithms of YouTube and other social media platforms, the right’s decades-long decimation of our educational system, and, yes, their sheer visibility.

These people are the greatest threat to our republic since King George III of England, and if you cannot see this, then you are purposefully blind. If you are purposefully blind to this threat of dictatorship, then you are, whether you realize it or not, within their ranks. You are, more than likely, a “Who, me?” racist, and an “I’m the one who’s going to heaven” bigot, and you represent an even greater threat to this republic than the people described in the paragraph above this one. You are the greater threat, because you will walk out of a republic and into a dictatorship secretly thinking that you will be the one who will benefit from it as you proclaim your innocence for its occurrence.

One day you will wake up to find this republic and its democratic processes gone and say “What? I didn’t do it!” Yes, you did, because you saw it happening and purposefully closed your eyes and looked the other way. Then again, it is not just you who will bear responsibility for the destruction of this beloved republic and its democratic institutions, but the rest of us as well, because really, we all see it coming, and if we all do nothing, we will all bear responsibility.

Peace to All

Niemand

Trump’s Further Reductionism: It Really Is Strange

One might think that having alienated the vast majority of the American electorate during his first term, Donald Trump would figure out the basic math of democracies: the person with the most votes wins. Unless you’re talking about the election of the President of the United States, and then it’s the person with the most electoral college votes wins. That’s very weird, and needs to end.

This essay is a revision and an evolution of a previous essay on this site titled “Reductionism, and the Strange Politics of Donald Trump.” It is updated from the original essay published in 2020 to account for events that have occurred since then. You know, indictments, insurrections, convictions and a host of strange actions and decisions made by a politician who wishes to succeed.

One of the most basic tenets of politics in the age of democracies is that politicians will generally try, as best they can, to appeal to as broad a base as possible. This is not to say that all politicians do this at the expense of the things in which they believe, but that they moderate their stance on these beliefs, realizing that compromise is the hallmark of a functioning democracy…and adulthood.

Donald Trump is evidently trying a different approach. Mr. Trump seems determined to reduce his constituency to the absolute smallest number possible, and hope that this will win him a victory in November, 2024. Over the space of his entire political existence, Donald Trump has sought to insult, degrade, and alienate every group of people in this country not solidly behind his political aspirations. It does not matter whether that group is identified by their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, political views, or any other characteristic. If they are not within his base, his hatred and complete contempt for them is proudly brandished every day.

Who are these people who make up Trump’s political base? They are primarily members of three basic groups: conservative christian evangelicals, white nationalists, and gun toters. Make no mistake, together, they make up a significant portion of the electorate, but they also overlap to a great extent, sharing several common characteristics which limits their percentage of the overall electorate. Many, if not most of them, are actually gun toting white nationalist christian evangelicals.

Specifically, they are politically unsophisticated, with little or no perception of what comprises a republic and its mechanisms of operation through the democratic process. They have little or no concept of the art of compromise, and how this purely adult form of conflict resolution serves to preserve and perpetuate any republic that functions on said democratic processes.

For the most part, they are poorly or under-educated and rarely have any college experience. Those who do lack a unified, holistic, and egalitarian view of the world outside of what is told to them by the governors of the Southern Baptist Convention (the religious teachings of which are essentially bigoted, exclusionary, nationalistic, and imperial), Fox News, Newsmax, and various other right wing mass media propaganda outlets.

They do not seek the truth. Rather, they are willing slaves to the algorithms that take them farther and farther down the rabbit hole of their racist comfort. If they sought truth, they would be in a different place altogether, and really, different people.

Encompassing the three groups mentioned above, Trump’s base consists almost solely of white people who live in a continuous cycle of fear, perpetuated by the propaganda outlets above, of non-white, non-heterosexual, non-conforming people. This fear cycle peaks when these groups demand equal justice under the law, and equal legal rights and treatment within society as a whole. When a member of the neoconservative right wing in this country argues against the ‘gay agenda,” remind them that this agenda consists of being treated with love, compassion, and basic respect afforded cis-gender, heterosexual white males in this country. Everybody should have this agenda…everybody.

The inherent problem with Trump’s strategy in 2020, and resumed unabated in 2024, is that people either on the fringes of this base, or who simply, for whatever reason, did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 are gone. They had four years of the carnival show that was the Trump presidency to completely alienate them from Trump and his personal brand of American fascism. Added to his time in the white house, they now see his flagrant threats to elected officials (“Mitch McConnell must have a death wish.”), multiple indictments for blatant criminal activity whether in office or out, vows to pardon insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow the will of the American people on January 6, 2021, and more to come.

His purposeful alienation of the portion of our electorate that looks critically at candidates for public office with little preference for party affiliation reflects the true manner in which Trump has decided to practice this strange reductionism. He has enthusiastically and horrifically driven from him every rational and truly patriotic American who does not worship him, as does his base, but who may have considered supporting him in previous elections.

What, then, could his overall strategy be? It must be this: Donald Trump previously banked on the chaos and destruction that his core base would bring upon America when he lost the election in 2020. He promised, and to some extent delivered on January 6, 2021, the chaos he promised when asked what his strategy for reelection would be earlier in the cycle. His candidacy in 2024 looks to be more of the same.

When he rightfully lost the 2020 presidential election he issued his call to arms, claiming that the liberals had stolen the election, that they are out to destroy America, and that he would save them if only they would go out and kill, maim, and burn America to the ground in his name and for his sole benefit. He has said many times: “I am the only person who can save America,” and I will tell you this right now; when someone says something like that, and you don’t immediately flush your support for them straight down the toilet, you have no business living outside of a facility for the criminally insane, let alone voting. If you continue to support them, you have no business calling yourself an American.

The bloody and murderous insurrection of January 6, 2021 — which, if you’ll pardon the colloquial speech, really was some pathetic punk-ass bullshit. I mean, if you pin your hopes for revolution on a couple of thousand stupid, hillbilly jackasses with some pepper spray and no plan, you’re just an amateur, stupid jerk-off — is testament to what a person like Donald Trump can do to people who are intellectually akin to rudderless vessels drifting through space and heading for a black hole. As he said in an interview in the 1990s “If I ever go into politics, I’ll probably do so as a republican. Those people will believe anything you tell them.” He was right. Those people who make up his ever shrinking base will believe anything he tells them. But that’s okay, he had a television show.

If he somehow wins the republican nomination, and afterwards, of course, loses the general election in November, 2024, I think he will be surprised at how few people will actually be willing to go out and destroy America on his behalf. It will happen in small, sporadic events, make no mistake, but we must be willing to absorb this spasm of violence of his core base and continue, as one nation, dedicated to the propositions laid out in our Declaration of Independence, and codified in our ever evolving Constitution.

Eventually, Donald Trump will fade into history as a sickening footnote of what can happen to any nation when the people do not actively participate in its democratic procedures and allow religious fanatics to gut their education system.

When asked what type of government he and the other framers of the Constitution had designed, Benjamin Franklin is rumored to have said the following: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Today, Donald Trump is the greatest testament since Adolf Hitler, that we must rededicate ourselves to keeping it.

Related to Mr. Franklin’s attributed statement above is the following: “All it takes for evil to prevail, is for good people to do nothing.” We must, as a nation, in every peaceful and constitutionally protected manner possible, repudiate in the strongest possible terms, the toxic, racist politics of Donald Trump and make certain that his political aspirations die in 2024. We must then rededicate ourselves to keeping the republic that Franklin warned us would be constantly under attack from enemies both outside and within our own country. If we do not, then believe me, evil people like Donald Trump and his white nationalist, gun toting evangelical followers will prevail.

Peace and Love to All

Christoph Niemand, Citizen X

An Open Letter To My Fellow Progressives

The point of this letter is unmistakeable, the reasons are just as recognizable, and both are as important as anything this republic has ever faced. The point of this very brief letter to my fellow progressives is this: Get behind Joe Biden, and use your organizational networks to their fullest capacity to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It’s as simple as that.

Why? Here’s why. In January of 2018, I published an essay on my blog-site, overwhelmingweirdness.com (which I highly suggest for insightful essays on Politics, Society, and a host of other subjects, There’s also a nice selection of my short fiction). Anyway, enough about that. The title of the essay is “It’s not About Policy Anymore.” I wrote and published that essay a couple of days after donald trump stood next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, and demonstrated in both word and deed, that he would do anything to please Putin, including denouncing this country’s entire intelligence community, because Putin supposedly “strongly denied” having meddled in the 2016 presidential election, when supposedly asked about the matter by donald trump during their hour-long, non-recorded meeting. Trump made it clear, in that absolutely humiliating display in Finland, who’s interests he would pursue in the world: Putin’s.

The point of that essay was that even though I have had disagreements with conservatives all of my adult life, all of us wanted the same thing, a better America, and we have been able to discuss our differences on various issues like adults. We continue to want the same thing, but we differ on what is the best path to the “more perfect union” spoken of in the preamble of the Constitution of the United States.

This is no longer the case, and it’s not about policy anymore. It’s about the survival of this republic, and the very clear and present threat donald trump’s political career poses to it. The situation with donald trump was bad when he stood next to his boss in Finland, now it is an incredibly real threat to our republic that not only serves the interests of Vladimir Putin, but also supports and encourages vigilante violence by his supporters to not only subdue dissent in this country, but to simply eliminate calls for changes to aspects of American culture that really shouldn’t concern him.

That’s the truth of the matter. As progressive citizens, we all want the Democratic Party to be further to the left. I, personally, want a Biden/Harris Administration to support and pursue: single-payer health care, a massive increase in funding for our educational systems, an immediate 30% reduction in the military budget, the annihilation of “qualified immunity” for police officers who shoot people, the adoption of a green energy initiative for the country that is in line with, and supports, the efforts of our European allies, the reestablishment of our alliances before 2017, true liberty and true justice for the true all in this country, and a host of other policies.

Maybe a Biden/Harris Administration will pursue these policies, and maybe they won’t, but we have to play the long game, here. If we must wait, then we must wait, and as we wait, we must build our strength, and our organizational foundations and networks. However, let me be crystal clear, we have to set our policy squabbles with the centrist forces in the Democratic Party aside for right now, and fight the fight that must be fought in order to rid this country of donald trump.

In very real terms, if you have been fooled into disbelieving donald trump’s very basic, very real, and very active evil, because he acts, at times, like a complete imbecile, then you are, well, a fool. Donald trump is playing a very real, and very violent game with our democracy, and we must all unite to put a stop to it. Know this, the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts of the last thirty years are nothing compared to what donald trump has planned for the United States if he can pull it off.

We must unite, as citizens: with the center of the Democratic Party, and all actual patriotic Americans of what used to be the Republican Party who stand against the tumor that has taken what they loved from them, and rid this country of any influence from the trump family. We can resume our debates with these other groups later, but right now, the survival of this country, and all for which it has hoped to stand is at stake.

We must not fail.

Christoph Niemand

Each Of Us Must Now Choose a Side

“These aren’t people, they’re animals.” These are the words of an American President.

I really need for each of you to allow that to sink in for a second. A person who is supposed to be the leader of this ‘nation of immigrants’ and the ‘free’ world has declared, publicly, that the poor and marginalized people who are risking their lives to try to find a better life for themselves and their families are not even human, they are animals; they are brownish…or, really, more of a sandstone, medium to dark tan. Anyway you look at it, they’re not moderately wealthy, Western Europeans. They’re from shit-hole countries, and we don’t want them.

[Aside: no sane, Western European would ever want to come here. I wonder why.]

If you have not actually listened to Mr. Trump’s comments, then you need to. The person to whom he was responding made a comment regarding MS13 gang members, but Mr. Trumps comments, after he declares these people to be animals, quickly ventured into speaking about Latin American immigrants in general with no delineation between them and the criminal element about which he began his comments. This was not accidental. This was not an oversight. This was Donald Trump revealing his inner-most thoughts about our Latin American neighbors. He has declared more than once that in his view these people who are fleeing the most horrid conditions any imperial, white citizen of the United States can imagine; people seeking asylum and safe harbor in the one country on this planet that is, by its very nature, supposed to welcome them, to be animals, something less than human and undesirable.

Please don’t mistake my meaning here. I’m not trying to minimize the brutality of drug smuggling/human trafficking cartels like MS13 and syndicates like them. However, as father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit Priest who has spent almost his entire adult life working with the toughest gangs in Los Angeles states; he has never met a member of any gang who wasn’t running from something. That something is hopelessness, despair, poverty, and a host of other factors that can take any person from the loving image of God in which they are born, and transform them into the hating image of a devil sent to steal, kill, and destroy.

Every example from the life and teachings of Jesus, the Christ, was quite clear that people should not, and from a secular perspective the President of the United States CANNOT EVER, refer to people as something less than human.

Folks, this can no longer stand. This is the issue on which we MUST confront our legislators in this country. Each of them must declare whether or not they stand with Mr. Trump on this issue, or if they stand against him. However they stand, we must demand that each of them state so, publicly, on the floor of the House or Senate. They must place their cowardly asses on the record. Here, now, in light of these words spoken by the president, it is now plainly (if not painfully) clear that you can stand with Jesus, or you can stand with Trump, but you can not do both.

Jesus said it best in His sermon: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” ~Matthew 6: 24

I wrote in my last post that we have to ask ourselves if this is what we want America to be, because as long as Mr. Trump sits in the White House, this is what America is.

These words are how it begins. When you begin to characterize people as less than human, as animals, it makes it a lot easier to deport these people, to destroy the families of these people, to slaughter these people. In a sermon I gave a little over a year ago I quoted from Father Martin Niemoller, a dissident priest during the Third Reich in Germany. He said the following:

“When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent. I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent. I was not a social democrat

When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out. I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews, I remained silent. I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.”

I concluded my commentary on those remarks from Father Neimoller with the following admonition: “People, we are at a crossroads in the social evolution of this country. We do not, any of us, want to have to ever say the following; ‘First they came for the immigrants…,’ because believe me, I don’t care who you are, if you don’t speak out, eventually they will come for you, and when that happens there may not be anybody left to speak out.” Christ spoke truth to power, and if we are to be his followers, then so must we.

Even more frightening is that words like those spoken by Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago are the first steps toward genocide. Words like those spoken by Donald Trump a few weeks ago are what allowed presidents and politicians of the 19th century to subject Native Americans to a systematic genocide. Words like those spoken by Mr. Trump led to the lynching of black Americans. Telling a nation that other people are less than human is what allowed people to stand silently by while almost nineteen million people, six million of them Jews, were sent to concentration camps and murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen.

Like Smoky the Bear used to say: “Only you can prevent genocide,” or something like that. The only way to make smoky smile now is to do two things: always speak truth to power, and call out politicians without allowing them to double-speak their way out of an answer.

Niemand