Friday, March 29

Many are disillusioned with American democracy. Can Joe Biden earn them? | Francine’s Prose


TThere is something exciting about hearing someone tell the truth, especially now that so many people seem to believe that the difference between fact and falsehood is a matter of political affiliation or personal opinion. Watching Kamala Harris and Joe Biden speak in the Capitol Rotunda on the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, hearing the president blame the brutal mutiny directly on Donald Trump and his supporters, was almost like exhaling, after holding your breath for too much time. Yes, it is a lie that the 2020 elections have been stolen. Yes, it is a lie that the rioters that swarmed the Capitol building were true American patriots. Those are facts that cannot be emphasized enough, that the powerful and the most respected must say and repeat.

In the past few days, I have seen deeply moving interviews with Capitol police officers who experienced the riots. Especially moving was PBS’s conversation with Sandra Garza, whose partner, Brian Sicknick, defended the Capitol from attackers and died the day after of a stroke; In Garza’s opinion, Donald Trump “needs to be in prison.” When I record my own jarring and adrenaline-pumping response to even the shortest movie clip of the crowd screaming for blood, I know I can’t begin to imagine what those who survived, and their loved ones, continue to suffer.

So it was a relief to hear Biden emphasize the gravity and dangers of political violence, as well as the urgent need to uphold and defend the constitution. It seemed vitally important to hear him say that it is necessary to remember January 6; that forgetting the past and moving on (as many Republican senators urge us to do) could pave the way for a second, and perhaps more catastrophic, assault on our government.

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Yet like many listeners, I imagine, I couldn’t help wondering how many people were being convinced, how many minds were being changed by the sanity, maturity, and clarity of the president’s speech. It’s not just that, as we keep hearing, Americans now live in two completely alternate realities: one in which the Covid vaccine prevents disease, another in which inoculation causes infertility and ALS. Among the obstacles that stand in the way of changing hearts and minds is that our problems, as a nation, are older, deeper and more serious than Donald Trump’s megalomania.

So while it was satisfying to hear Biden directly hold Trump accountable for increasing his base’s bloodlust, for watching the chaos on TV, and making no attempt to stop it, I kept reminding myself of something that I remember people saying right after midnight. 2016 election: that the malevolent genius Trump had unleashed from the bottle was unlikely to ever come back in. Five years after what seems truer than ever: My feeling is that Trump could retire entirely from public life tomorrow and that support for him and his ideas would remain unabated. Half a dozen Capitol rioters were elected to office in November, and two dozen more plan to run in the next election.

What he wished Biden had recognized was the fact that the angry and disturbing genie had inhabited the bottle long before “the defeated former president” ever popped the cork. I wish Biden had followed through on his gratifying rebuke of Trump and his supporters with a commitment to seek and eradicate the roots of alienation, resentment and anger that divide our country so deeply.

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Why, aside from the lying claims of a stolen election, did the rioters arm and shield themselves and travel to Washington? It struck me that many of Trump’s supporters are perhaps not entirely undemocratic, but so acutely (or unconsciously) aware of the imperfections of our democracy: its oligarchic edge. Biden may have reminded us that each of our votes is equally important. But the only thing I possibly have in common with the thugs who invaded the Capitol is the painful awareness that my voice is not as audible in Washington as the voices of the CEOs of Pfizer, Delta, and Target.

I thought of how, during the Great Depression, Eleanor Roosevelt traveled the country asking beleaguered Americans about their difficulties and needs. How little of that seems to be happening now, when the consensus seems to be that our wounds can be healed remotely, cajoling recalcitrant legislators into passing laws with potential benefits that have so far eluded the understanding of many Americans.

Of all the horrible things that happened on January 6, one of the most disturbing to me was Trump’s farewell speech to the rioters when he finally advised them to go home. “You are very special,” he said. “We love you.”

Like any cult of personality, Trump’s passionate support sounds more like an affair of the heart (admittedly one-sided) than a reasoned political choice. And, in my experience, few lovers have fallen out of love after being informed that the loved one is an egotist and a liar.

Of course, the best-known cure for love is finding someone else, but what is most helpful, in the long run, is understanding why one was involved in a deceptive and unbalanced relationship, and finding a way to design and inhabit. A better future. . What I wish I had heard in Biden’s speech was a persuasive insight into the fuller, less tormented life that we can only hope awaits us in the event that the poisonous romance with violence and hatred dies down and is finally over.

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