These Are The Times Trying America's Soul

Thomas Paine's words have as much meaning today as they did 250 years ago

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I have not published a piece on this site in more than a month. Not for a lack of ideas to discuss, since I’ve started at least half a dozen pieces on topics related to the Trump Administration’s wrecking-ball approach to governance, economics, and foreign affairs. To be frank, almost everything they have done in their first year in office seems to have emanated from questionable motives and not the general welfare. The deluge of threats, the dismantling of the federal government, and the blatant corruption, coupled with contempt for the rule of law- all of these outrages have left me struggling for clarity. How could I- or any thinking person- make sense out of any of this? I began referring to the numbing effect of these events as the Broken-By-Breaking-News syndrome.

An undergraduate degree in American History gives me some perspective on the contradictions inherent in the world’s longest-enduring democratic republic. To understand America so as to see the path to progress, we must acknowledge what is bad about our democracy as well as what is good. I am of the generation raised by Americans who lived through the Great Depression, and by men and women who fought and won World War II. The United States emerged in the mid-20th Century as the leader of the free world. We were the good guys, the keepers of the liberal order that would make the world more peaceful. So ingrained in the nation’s psyche was this grand view of ourselves that even a cultural totem like the cartoon character Superman could crow about “Truth, Justice and the American Way”.

Yet, it became clear to me that America had always been blind, willfully or not, to the structural and social inequalities that belied its self-image as the global standard for democracy. We were the Land of Opportunity, but we denied those opportunities to enslaved blacks and to women. We visited a near-genocide upon the natives as we displaced them from the lands we coveted. Immigrants were welcomed here as they sought a better life. They filled the ranks of the workforce that built the railroads. toiled in the factories, and farmed the lands. But even as the waves of Europeans and Chinese flocked here and contributed to the growth of the nation’s wealth, an anti-immigrant strain, frequently based on racist or religious prejudice, would from time-to-time rear its ugly head.¹

There have been growing pains and national crises. A divided nation fought a Civil War that was the deadliest in the nation’s history. To this day, the persistence of racism is a reminder that traces of that divide still infect our society. In its economic transition from the agrarian, pre-industrial society of colonial America to today’s technological, post-industrial global economic power, a class of capitalist oligarchs arose, amassing great wealth and fostering an economic caste system. The consequence was not only financial inequality, but a volatile economy beset by cycles of booms and busts, recessions, inflation, and, in particular, the Great Depression.

Reform movements- abolition, women’s suffrage, temperance, to name a few- were also a characteristic of American society: the American Revolution sprang from protests against the tyrannical King George III of England. The through line of popular activism runs straight from the labor union movements of the late 19th Century, the Progressive politics of the early 20th Century, to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. In the political domain, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal is perhaps the most notable achievement of the reform movement being implemented in government.

As reform activists worked to create a more just and righteous society, reactionary interests invariably pushed back. The efforts of financial and corporate entities intensified over the last century as they sought unfettered power by weakening the government’s authority to regulate and constrain them. The conservative movement has conducted a well-funded and widespread project for decades in order to neuter popular government and to treat the population as their marks in a great confidence game of bait-and-switch. All the talk about limited government and individual rights was a cover for the oligarchs’ scheme to frustrate the will of the people by appealing to the uninformed and naive libertarian impulses of an unsophisticated segment of the public. The cherry on top of this unsavory cake is a President who sees the world and, particularly, politics, in transactional terms. He is a man who knows how to name his price.

This is not complicated- just follow the money; our politics are awash in it. We speak of a “donor class”, as if our politicians are a charity. It raises the question of whom do are elected officials serve- the voters or the donors. As we witness the dissolution of mass media, of the “free press” that is supposed to be the watchdog of government, we should understand that much of the media is owned or controlled by the very people who desire to weaken our democracy.

The nightmare in every democracy, the very nightmare, is that if it gets worse and worse and worse, we could end up with totalitarianism. — Norman Mailer

We now find ourselves at another crisis point, perhaps the greatest threat yet to this experiment in self-government. The Trump Presidency is a cult of personality, and the sad fact is that this personality is a sociopathic narcissist with an authoritarian bent. The institutions of our government, particularly the Congress, have forfeited their Constitutional responsibilities in deference to the mindless whims of a blustering fool. Traditional norms, the practices that have customarily guided the conduct of our political leaders, are meaningless to this President and the minions with whom he has populated his Administration. These days, the idea that government exists of, by, and for the People is a quaint anachronism.

My thoughts on the danger we face have begun to come into focus through a framework Sarah Paine², a retired professor of History and Grand Strategy at the United States Naval War College, described. In a discussion you can find here, she describes what she terms “pivotal errors“:

We all make errors, but if you make a “pivotal error”, there’s no going back to the status quo ante, and the choices you have following your pivotal error are much worse than you had before going in. It’s going to be much worse than before I did that. So, good strategists try to avoid pivotal errors. And what I worry about as an American is whether the United States is about to make a pivotal error. Going after Greenland would be a pivotal error for the United States.

So I’ve concluded that we are in the midst of making a pivotal error. The clumsy incompetence of the Administration, the cowardly kowtowing to the mercurial impulses of an unscrupulous President by the very institutions meant to act as a check on executive power, and the flagrant displays of self-dealing, are all evidence of a democracy in decay. In one breathtaking year, the Trump Regime has shrunk the Federal government to a level of impotence and wielded tariffs as a weapon against our trading partners, increasing the costs of goods for American consumers and importers. Trump has used the threat of military action against our allies (!), resulting in a ruinous impact on our standing in the world. Most egregiously, he has loosed a thuggish paramilitary (ICE) on the streets of American cities under the guise of rounding up criminal illegal immigrants. The result is an atmosphere of fear, with legal citizens as well as illegal immigrants being seized and jailed. The culmination was the unwarranted killings of two American citizens in Minneapolis by Federal agents, a bizarre déjà vu of the 1770 Boston Massacre.

Saving our Republic

It is often said that a crisis presents an opportunity. Sarah Paine uses a framework that describes policies and actions in terms of levels- tactical, operational, and strategic. Success or failure only matters at the strategic level. (You can view her describing the framework in this video.) Dealing with a crisis requires a strategy with pragmatic goals, and realizing those goals requires a plan (the operational level). My goal over the next few months is to begin by defining strategic goals.

I am clear on one basic thought: there is no path to progress unless we, a majority of citizens, admit to the problems, and agree we cannot return to the status quo. In this crisis, we should resist burrowing into our sectarian differencess, avoid the distraction of petty partisan bickering over trivial issues, and grasp the existential peril for which we are headed.

So, for one, the strategic goal is not for the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress in 2026, nor a Democrat take the White House in 2028. Those are operational goals. The strategic goal is to reform our political system to prevent authoritarian forces from ever again seizing the levers of power. A parallel goal must be ensuring that the rule of law is upheld and all citizens are equal before it. The nation’s economy must be made subject to a framework that allows both growth and social benefit: “the free market” is a canard, and capitolism works best when we all play by the same set of rules. To this end, a goal of a sound strategy is a financial sector functioning so risk is minimized and growth is realized.

Leadership

At the most dire times in the America’s history, the nation was fortunate the man in the White House was up to the task of guiding the nation by providing clear direction and galvanizng popular support. Neither Abraham Lincon nor Franklin D. Roosevelt were without flaw, but they understood their role as a tribune of the people, and acted accordingly. Needless to say, the current resident of 1500 Pensylvania Avenue is of a much lower character, lacking the virtues the Founders felt necessary for a President.

It is my sense that there are men andr women of intellect, honor, courage, and charisma among us. To implement a strategy effectively, leadership is essential. The will and activism of the people is necessary if such persons are to emerge. Paraphasing the words of Thomas Paine, I point out to those who are apathetic or hopeless, that Trump “cannot conquer us, and it proves that he is neither able to govern nor protect us”.

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1. The Know-Nothings (officially, the American Party) were a mid-19th-century anti-immigrant movement. They were known for their anti-Catholicism and the goal to preserve a Protestant hegemony. Other examples include the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the National Origins Formula (used in various statutes from 1921 to 1965), which set immigration quotas by country.

2. If you are interested in Sarah Paine’s talks on strategy and foreign affairs, she has many videos on YouTube. You can search for her by name.