| DEMOCRACY AWAKENING Notes on the State of America Heather Cox Richardson New York: Viking, October 2023 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13: 978-0-593-65296-1 | ||||
| ISBN-10: 0-593-65296-7 | 286pp. | HC | $30.00 | |
These words were tweeted by Bill Kristol, former leader of the neoconservative movement, on 6 February 2020, the day after Senate Republicans refused to convict Trump of inciting insurrection and one month to the day after Trump's attempt at overturning the 2020 presidential election had failed.1
The fact that a dyed-in-the-wool Republican stalwart like Bill Kristol would separate himself from his party, even provisionally, underscores how far beyond the pale Trump and his enablers had pushed their defiance of American laws and traditions. But Trump was not done pushing yet. Indeed, as his niece Mary L. Trump has repeatedly warned,2 he must be forced to stop, because such self-restraint is not in him. And he did not stop, as the author tells us in Chapter 20: "The Big Lie" — not after losing at least 63 court challenges to the election results; not after 91 criminal indictments. He remains the leading candidate in the Republican primary, and he and his followers still spout The Big Lie. Across the nation, measures that buttress the eventual demolition of democracy are being put in place.
Sad to say, those measures include the manner in which our media cover politics — especially political campaigns, but also the day-to-day machinations of the Congress and state legislatures. In 2016, Trump got twice as much free media coverage as Hillary Clinton did,3 and matters of policy were covered poorly, while more airtime was devoted to Trump's bogus claims of scandals such as her private email server. Fox News, which became the most popular network on cable by means of its biased coverage, has not changed its operations much despite heavy fines for defamation. And there are media outlets that position themselves to its right.
Trump's lies demonstrated his dominance at the same time they sucked the air out of the room for Americans who were trying to produce a true picture of what was really happening. Russian-American journalist Julia Ioffe, who had chronicled Putin's takeover of Russia, noted that "the only people who were fully prepared to cover the Trump presidency properly were people who knew how authoritarian regimes worked. The Washington press corps, which treats politics as something between a baseball game and a Broadway show, was woefully unprepared." – Page 96 |
Between the lies being told by Trump and his enablers, including several members of Congress and the Republican candidates purportedly running against him for the nomination, the changes to election law being made by red-state legislatures, the detailed plan from conservative organizations including the Heritage Institute,4 the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the likelihood that major media will cover the 2024 election much as they have covered prior presidential campaigns, there is a substantial risk of Trump winning the presidency again. It falls to all Democrats and independents — and any Republicans who still care about preserving American democracy — to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot. There are some Republicans who qualify. One is Liz Cheney, who lost her seat in the House because she served on the January 6 Commission which presented the evidence of Trump's involvement in the insurrection. As that Commission was wrapping up its work, she said this:5
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