The test of democracy doesn’t occur when a candidate promises to do monstrous things. It doesn’t even come when the monstrous things are done. (Illustration from Magic Studio.)
It comes when the monster’s people turn on him. Can they join with those who only warned about the monster, those who opposed the monster reluctantly, and those who just weren’t interested at the time, to remove the monster from power?
Can they do it without violence? Or, at least, with minimal violence?
Every democracy has been tested in this way. Some passed the test. Others failed. Still others failed initially, then came to their senses and passed.
There is nothing Donald Trump and his party have done in office that they didn’t say they would do during the campaign. It would have been worse for democracy had they not done these things. Supporters would have been disappointed, nursed grievances, and kept demanding the changes they were promised. Fortunately for democracy, that didn’t happen. The monstrous program is being enacted.
For Democrats, the question becomes, what then? The democratic answer is to find those who supported the policies, who were hurt, then changed their minds and embrace them. That’s also the Christian thing to do.
Seen from Europe, where monsters have roamed the land for centuries, where they still exist, and where they are still being fought, all this seems obvious.
The Lesson
Americans are not monsters. But we have done monstrous things, even during my lifetime, always claiming that some higher principle demanded it.
In my time, we saw some of those things revealed, and we officially renounced them.
But it’s clear now many of us were doing pinkie swears. That’s because Trump himself is not the monster. He was always the voice in the back, egging the monster on while eating a cheeseburger. We, the people, we are the monster.
If we approve what liberals consider to be monstrous things done in our name, that’s democracy. It’s only if we all disapprove, and find we can do nothing, that democracy is even in peril.
For now, American democracy remains intact.
