Two Americas Diverge

There are two Americas right now.

One is centered around a cultish strongman figure who promises retribution, violence, and dictatorial rule. His followers love him because he directs his vitriolic hatred at the people they fear the most – literally anyone who is not an obedient follower of the cult. It could be easier to say it is a movement of white supremacy and Christian nationalism – a reactionary faction sparked by hatred over the two-time election of a black president, and fueled by weird people who think that it’s wrong for other people to be different from them. One thing is for sure, they do not tolerate dissent. These people who yell “sheeple” loudest are the biggest “sheeple” of all.

On the other side, we have a typically dysfunctional Democratic party. Joe Biden is the current President and leader of that party. He had a pretty disastrous debate performance a few weeks ago, and this led people to complain that Biden had deceptively hidden his true ability to function from the electorate. How this can be reconciled with the decision to do an early debate is anyone’s guess. But, after that performance, it was a full-court press (no pun intended) by beltway media clickmeisters, big-money donors, and some fearful Dems with big followings to convince Biden to step aside.

Joe Biden will be President until next January. He will not be seeking re-election, and his Vice President, Kamala Harris, is expected to run in his stead with overwhelming support. She is an excellent candidate – smart, capable, and qualified. I was not a big proponent of Biden being forced out of this race like this, but am gratified that, once done, Democrats rallied around the Vice President as the only correct and logical choice to take over. It is a big risk either way, but Trump’s support and opposition is so baked-in that there was no real perceptible polling change after the failed attempt on his life, or after the kooky yawnfest that was the Republican National Convention.

On the other end, on my socials, I saw snarky posts from Gen-X Bernie die-hards not making any bones about their full-on gerontophobia. Their hatred of the incumbent reaches Let’s-Go-Brandon proportions, perhaps intentionally. These same people spent much of 2016 and 2020 railing against what they perceived as top-down DNC engineering of a Presidential race, and here they were in 2024 demanding top-down DNC engineering of a Presidential race. Snake emojis and “Kamala the cop” and “Mayo Pete” spring to mind.

The America that Democrats embody at this moment in 2024 is messy, like democracy itself. When you have a big tent of competing interests, they sometimes make aggressive noises at each other before eventually uniting for the common good. The Democrats’ America is about lowering inflation, investment in infrastructure, energy production and independence, job growth, supporting unionization, health care for all, lowering drug prices, defending and supporting liberal democracies like Ukraine, pressuring autocratic regimes like Hungary, and ending the slaughter in Israel and Palestine. The world is a complicated and chaotic place and all of its problems can be dealt with in a serious way that advances our interests, or it can be all reduced to sloppy sloganeering and veneration of tyrants.

It is, when you think about it, quite astounding that we find ourselves here.

Incidentally, as an aside, I listened Monday to “analysis” on WBFO offered by Dr. Shyam Sriram of Canisius’ political science department. He argued that Democrats are stuck on identity politics and offer no substantive policy proposals. He then said that Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump mini-me, ran on policies. This is madness. I set forth above the policies on which Democrats are running. The race that Democrats ran in 2020 was heavy on policies, most pressing of which was handling of the pandemic that killed over a million Americans. Ramaswamy ran what amounted to a right-wing meme campaign, heavy on slogans and light on substance. It failed with catastrophic celerity in a party defined by a cult of personality.

Dr. Sriram argued that, in deciding on a running mate for Vice President Harris, Dems should avoid selecting a white candidate for the sake of some sort of ethnic balance. I don’t know who said that or where he got that idea, but I’m pretty sure that Harris’ campaign is going to select someone who is ready to become President at a moment’s notice, possibly someone who has relevant experience that she lacks, and also someone who can deliver votes in swing states like Pennsylvania or Arizona. I don’t know what questions were asked of Dr. Sriram, but the idea that Vivek Ramaswamy could be held out as a prime example of a campaign based on substance was too absurd to let go. Ramaswamy engaged in identity politics like crazy, ingratiating himself to white evangelicals, being transphobic, and disenfranchising Americans between the ages of 18 – 25.

In Ramaswamy’s and Trump’s America, we also have the Supreme Court, which has in the last two decades devolved into a corrupt, corruptable, and politically unchecked fiefdom. It has taken in recent months to make fundamental changes to what we understand to be American values. For decades, the conservative movement has moaned and wailed against “activist” courts and judges, which had interpreted the Constitution in ways that expanded our ideas of freedom, liberty, and privacy. The “activist” courts declared that segregation was violative of the Constitution, that a right to privacy exists in the Constitution that prevents government from intervening against interracial marriage, use of contraception, same-sex marriage, and the right of women and their physicians to have the freedom to decide whether a pregnancy needs to be terminated either by choice in its earlier stages, or due to medical necessity later on. All of this has now changed. Contemporary conservatives reject the idea of a federal, constitutional right to privacy because it is inconsistent with their need to wield raw power and to rule, unobstructed by democratic or legal considerations.

We had for years understood as a society that our elected leaders – even the President – are not nobility immune from liability for criminal acts. Yet the Supreme Court, which now has a “conservative” majority, is as activist as any in history. Just last year, it took the unprecedented step of taking away womens’ reproductive decision-making rights. Seldom had the highest court in the land shrunk people’s individual rights in modern times, yet here we are. This year, the court granted to Presidents the right and ability to act with impunity from criminal liability as to any “official” acts. Impeachment is specifically set up in the Constitution as a political tool to remove Presidents when they commit high crimes or treason. It stands to reason that, if the Constitution anticipates criminality in the chief executive that would allow for political trial and removal, then sanctions set forth within the underlying criminal statutes would also be applicable.

The Supreme Court as it is currently constituted is a threat to our democratic republic. Donald Trump and Trumpism are, likewise, threats to our democratic republic. You may have heard by now of “Project 2025“, which is a 900-page handbook written by overpaid preppies from the so-called “Heritage Foundation.” What it amounts to is a “Neo-Fascistic Autocracy For Dummies”. Without getting into details, which you can research for yourself, it would amount to a return to the US as it existed pre-New Deal. The federal government would be reduced to little more than a tool to oppress anyone who exists outside the prescribed norm of white, male, and at least nominally Christian. Project 2025 will make you poorer, less free, and easier to be ruled. It will subjugate the women in your life, treat minorities of every stripe cruelly, outlaw things like abortion, contraception, and being in any way gender non-comforming, and put an end to things like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

I like to consider myself politically pretty normal. I don’t go in for extremism on any end of the political spectrum. To me, the Trump people and the Project 2025 people are really weird on a fundamental level. I don’t get the appeal of any of it. I look at the meltdowns that the Trump people have displayed online and on TV over Biden dropping out and it’s quite clear that they’re not processing the news well. One local Trumpy congressman demanded that Biden resign the Presidency because he decided not to run for re-election. Not sure how a decision not to serve four more years equates to an inability to serve 100 more days, but these people are just having a hard time processing the fact that they are running a convicted felon against a former prosecutor, a guy pushing 80 against a woman in her 50s. You’d be panicking, too.

In the choice between these two Americas, I choose the one that is built on competence and hope. I choose the one that is founded on diversity of ideas, visions, and people. I choose the one that looks forward and not backward. I choose the one based on making life better for average people, not the one that wants to take rights away. I choose the one that thrives on innovation and change and not the one that trafficks in fear and hatred. I will prefer the messy democratic republic over strongman autocracy. I will also insist on the power of the Supreme Court being checked, whether through congressional action or rules concerning ethics and terms of office. No person in our government ought to exist as an untouchable entity above the law – not the President, and not the Supreme Court Justices.

When November rolls around, I am going to vote enthusiastically for Kamala Harris for President. I can only hope that the US can imitate the wholesale rejection of conservative ineptitude and right-wing fearmongering we recently saw in the UK and France, respectively.