The US Was Always Stable, Until It Wasn’t

In the last four years Donald Trump has squandered America’s greatest asset-not our wealth or our military strength, but our reputation in the world as an enduringly stable country. We are now just another country that has flirted with authoritarianism and political instability, just another country that was always stable until it wasn’t. America is now a country that, to borrow a phrase from the great Leonard Cohen has “been stable, give or take an administration or two.”

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Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Paradox

The paradox facing Biden is that if he wins, he will preside over a country whose ability to lead internationally, and whose role in the world, has changed dramatically over the last four years. The combination of Trump’s foreign policy, the terrible damage Covid19 has done to the US, the weakening of American democracy over the last four years and the real possibility of instability here, even if Biden becomes president, means that the US will be in no position to simply reassume the mantle of global leadership. Additionally, the American people, worn out by all these problems, have become reluctant to become too involved with the rest of the world.

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It Is Happening Here

Donald Trump’s decision to send storm-troopers into Portland is only surprising if you haven’t been paying attention. It is only a shock if you have willfully looked past the three and a half year long assault on American democracy that the Trump administration has been. And it is only a standalone act that will not be tolerated by our courts or federalist system if you have barricaded yourself into a Pollyannaish fantasy world. A more grounded view of what is occurring in Portland and elsewhere is that with the election three and a half months away Donald Trump has telegraphed that he will use violence, security services personally loyal to him and a very dubious grasp on the Constitutional limits on his office to do whatever is necessary to intimidate his opposition and remain in office.

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American Democracy's Last Stand

The recent months of the Covid-19 pandemic have made Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses and mental instability, as well as the cult-like loyalty of his of his followers, even more apparent. In the last few weeks, even in the last few days, as Donald Trump has asserted his “total” authority while continuing to suggest that, in so many words, universal suffrage is prima facie election fraud, the acceleration of democratic rollback has increased substantially. Queries and earnest commentary about whether the US is in the beginning of a Constitutional crisis seem positively quaint now. We are not at the beginning of that crisis, nor, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, are we at the end of the beginning. We are in the middle, or perhaps more alarmingly, approaching the end of that crisis-and democracy is losing.

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Republican Obedience to Trump is the Real Story of Democratic Rollback

The decision by the non-Trump leadership of the Republican Party to cast their lot with Russia and Trump rather than with the US, and indeed with traditional conservative, even right-wing policies is baffling, but only if one ignores the corrosive influences of bigotry, ignorance and anti-democratic sentiments in the GOP since long before spring of 2015.

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The Dangerous Buffoonery of Donald Trump

Sinclair Lewis may or may not have written that "(w)hen fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Regardless of who said it first, that sentiment has captured the revulsion many Americans have long felt when far right leaders cloak their bigotry, cruelty and anti-democratic policies in false patriotism and Christianity. As the tragedy of the Trump administration continues, it is evident that Lewis’s sentiment, while still resonant, should be modified somewhat. Under Trump, democratic rollback is wrapped in a clown suit and is carrying a smartphone.

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The Midterm Elections and the Point of No Return for American Democracy

A good midterm for the Democrats is necessary for the future of democracy, but it will not solve all, or really virtually any, of our problems. A Democratic victory will bring some modest change, slow down the damage being done to our country and allow advocates for democracy to, metaphorically speaking, live to fight another day, but a Republican sweep will strengthen the emerging cult of Trump and perhaps take American democracy to a tipping point from which it cannot recover. 

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The Big Blue Wave Is Necessary but Won’t Be Sufficient →

A big Democratic win in November will slow down the decline of American democracy, but unless the broader questions of how to create a new narrative about our society and economy that does not perpetually pit us against each other, how to create political and electoral laws and institutions that are consistent with contemporary realities of democracy, how to reinvigorate news outlets that have a somewhat more than tenuous relationship to the truth and how to train a population that has been addled by Fox News, Twitter and hyper-partisanship to distinguish between fact and fantasy are addressed, the downward spiral of  American democracy will continue.

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Donald Trump's War on American Institutions →

Over the past few months, several different developments in the Trump administration, as well as statements and actions by the president and those around him, provide useful insight into the direction and nature of this White House. To understand this fully, it is necessary to take a bigger-picture view of what Donald Trump is doing and what that means for our political system.

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