America under siege
The last few weeks have been more stressful than the some during the Trump administration, even during the height of the pandemic. It is easy to grow weary and lose faith that after nearly a quarter of a millennium, this country will self-correct once again. That sense is spreading (Associated Press):
For many Americans, the Republican dysfunction that has ground business in the U.S. House to a halt as two wars rage abroad and a budget crisis looms at home is feeding into a longer-term pessimism about the country’s core institutions.
The lack of faith extends beyond Congress, with recent polling conducted both before and after the leadership meltdown finding a mistrust in everything from the courts to organized religion. The GOP internal bickering that for nearly three weeks has left open the speaker’s position — second in line to the presidency — is widely seen as the latest indication of deep problems with the nation’s bedrock institutions.
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About half of adults (53%) say they have “hardly any confidence at all” in the people running Congress, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that was conducted in October. That’s in line with 49% who said that in March. Just 3% have a great deal of confidence in Congress, virtually unchanged from March.
About 4 in 10 adults (39%) have hardly any confidence in the executive branch of the federal government, compared with 44% in March. Most Republicans (56%) have low levels of confidence in the executive branch — which is overseen by a member of the opposing party, Democrat Joe Biden — compared with just 20% of Democrats.
About a third of adults (36%) say they have hardly any confidence in the conservative-majority Supreme Court, a figure that has remained steady in recent months. The polling reinforces that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say their confidence in the Supreme Court is low. Black Americans are more likely than Americans overall, as well as more likely than white or Hispanic adults, to have hardly any confidence in the nation’s highest court.
One-third of U.S. adults (33%) continue to have low levels of confidence in the Justice Department, with Republicans having less confidence than Democrats. This comes as former President Donald Trump rails against the department after being charged with mishandling classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Efforts to undermine our system and to build public support for autocracy are decades old.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson charts them in her recent book. As her publisher sells it:
In Democracy Awakening, Richardson crafts a compelling and original narrative, explaining how, over the decades, a small group of wealthy people have made war on American ideals. By weaponizing language and promoting false history they have led us into authoritarianism — creating a disaffected population and then promising to recreate an imagined past where those people could feel important again. She argues that taking our country back starts by remembering the elements of the nation’s true history that marginalized Americans have always upheld. Their dedication to the principles on which this nation was founded has enabled us to renew and expand our commitment to democracy in the past. Richardson sees this history as a roadmap for the nation’s future.
Since I’m only partway through, I’ll have to take Penguin’s word that. Richardson’s description of the modern downward trend begins, familiarly, in the 1970s with the beginning of the conservative backlash to the Civil Rights movement. But its roots lie in the white backlash to Reconstruction.
The Associated Press reflection on where we are concedes the same post-1970s history. The decline in trust accelerated with the T-party movement that arose in reaction to Barack Obama’s presidency and deeppened with Donald Trump’s rejection of the 2020 election results.
“That validated the idea that the whole institutional system is rigged, which it isn’t,” said David Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University.
Democracy once was rigged only when Republicans lost. By further stoking public distrust even when they win, they hope to build support for replacing it with autocratic rule. People are fickle. Republicans have a better shot at retaining power when the consent of the governed is not a factor.
Yes, that’s discouraging. More than that, argues Bishop William J. Barber II, it is “mean, unjust and evil.” America is under siege.
Anyone who has heard a sermon from Bishop William J. Barber II knows he knows the history as well as Richardson.
Barber insists. “Society can’t die here. Democracy can’t die here. Justice cannot die here.” But that requires a plan. It requires we be as steadfast as our relentless, long-scheming opponents. We have power we are not using, the power of the vote. Especially poor and low-wealth Americans. There are 15 states, he insists, in which if only 20 percent of non-voters turned out, they could change the results.
Do not let the stress get to you. Keep on keeping on.