Donald Trump and maga Repubicans are destroying our nation's democracy. Donald Trump is toppling democracy and Republicans are responsible
An American president toppling American democracy is uncharted territory: No, we haven’t been here before. By Renée Graham Globe Columnist, echo opinion published in the Boston Globe.
A common refrain on social media these days is to tell those fretting over democracy in retreat that “we’ve been here before.”
In a social media post, Doanld Trump demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi (aka "Nurse Rached" of the Justice Department) act on his promised vendettas against his perceived political enemies.
At a memorial service for Charlie Kirk on Sunday, Trump said that, contrary to the far-right podcaster who he claimed “did not hate his opponents,” “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”
On Monday, Trump spread unproven claims linking autism to Tylenol use by pregnant women, repeated the discredited idea that vaccines may be tied to autism, and promoted an untested treatment for children with “autistic symptoms.”
Trump hasn’t said anything about reports his Justice Department shut down a 2024, FBI investigation into Tom Homan, now his border czar, for allegedly accepting 💲50,000 in cash from undercover agents posing as businessmen in exchange for future government contracts connected to border security.
But after last week’s sudden suspension of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show, which was scheduled to return Tuesday night, Trump had plenty to say about revoking licenses for networks if people there say negative things about him. (Awwww ❗ 😝😒)
That doesn’t even cover the ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that are upending families and communities by disappearing people everyday and subjecting them to inhumane conditions, including some who are legally documented or American citizens.
Congressional Republicans have surrendered their constitutional obligations. Democratic leadership is stupefied. The conservative-led Supreme Court is using its shadow docket like a sledgehammer against democracy on Trump’s behalf.
Recent generations have never seen anything like this, as the worst president in American history surpasses his first term as the worst president in American history. Millions are justifiably bothered and bewildered, and Trump’s return to the White House is still several months shy of a year.
If many are mired in feelings of doom in a country that seems unrecognizable, it’s because we haven’t witnessed anything like this. And so long as the Trump administration remains in power, things will only get worse.
Of course, we’ve known national horrors like Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 6, 2021. We’ve lived through white supremacist massacres at a Buffalo supermarket, a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Walmart in El Paso, and a historic Black church in Charleston, S.C. This nation continues to have more mass shootings than any other country in the world.
Threads of fascism have always been woven into this nation’s flawed and incomplete democracy. Jim Crow laws thrived for nearly a century after the end of the Civil War and barred Black people from their constitutional rights as American citizens.
People of color continue to live under what those least affected accept as racial profiling, which the Supreme Court’s conservatives recently and temporarily endorsed as a tool for federal immigration enforcement. (Check my Maine Writer substack article at this site here- SCOTUS and the Nuremberg Laws.)
As Americans, we are the descendants of those who fought against codified racism and for suffrage. We are the children of the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, and the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott that started in December 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus as the law dictated.
We are the beneficiaries of warriors known and unknown who gave their lives but never sold their souls to move this recalcitrant nation closer to its promise of “a more perfect union.”
In this moment, Americans of conscience now charged with meeting these hard times with determination, courage, and eyes toward a future that this malignant administration has made feel further out of reach than ever.
To say “we’ve been through this before” is to diminish the dangerous churn of current events. Most Americans today — excluding those who fled autocratic regimes for the promise of freedom here — have never lived under fascism. But Trump is destroying the Constitution as blithely as he destroyed the White House Rose Garden and replaced it with a tacky patio.
To fight against what Trump is doing to democracy and America requires recognition that his willfully catastrophic actions are a stark departure from all that has come before. History may serve as a guide, but its echoes and outcomes alone won’t save us.
For too many Americans, if they allowed themselves to fully grasp reality, they would fall apart. The anxiety and looming sense of hopelessness would be overwhelming. One can only hope that luminaries in the media continue to try to break through the country’s willful blindness, because democracy is worth fighting for.
T.S. Eliot famously wrote, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” But we, as a nation, to save our country, have to find the courage to man-and-woman- stand up to defeat Trumpziism.
From Elaine Mintzer in Merrimack, New Hampshire
A common refrain on social media these days is to tell those fretting over democracy in retreat that “we’ve been here before.”
It’s usually intended as a bit of tough love to counter scary and rampant fears about what the Donald Trump administration is doing to this country and the world.
While the idea that this nation has been in dark places before is true, it also misses a salient point about this particular petrifying moment in American history: Those of us alive today haven’t been here, in a place this dire, before.
While the idea that this nation has been in dark places before is true, it also misses a salient point about this particular petrifying moment in American history: Those of us alive today haven’t been here, in a place this dire, before.
Never before has this nation suffered under an American president using all available means to topple American democracy. By comparison, President Trump makes former president Richard Nixon, who ducked impeachment for his criminal activities by resigning, look like an ornery child.
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| Donald Trumps vision for our nation's crumbling democracy is clearly Nazism ❗ |
At a memorial service for Charlie Kirk on Sunday, Trump said that, contrary to the far-right podcaster who he claimed “did not hate his opponents,” “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”
On Monday, Trump spread unproven claims linking autism to Tylenol use by pregnant women, repeated the discredited idea that vaccines may be tied to autism, and promoted an untested treatment for children with “autistic symptoms.”
Trump hasn’t said anything about reports his Justice Department shut down a 2024, FBI investigation into Tom Homan, now his border czar, for allegedly accepting 💲50,000 in cash from undercover agents posing as businessmen in exchange for future government contracts connected to border security.
But after last week’s sudden suspension of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show, which was scheduled to return Tuesday night, Trump had plenty to say about revoking licenses for networks if people there say negative things about him. (Awwww ❗ 😝😒)
That doesn’t even cover the ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that are upending families and communities by disappearing people everyday and subjecting them to inhumane conditions, including some who are legally documented or American citizens.
Congressional Republicans have surrendered their constitutional obligations. Democratic leadership is stupefied. The conservative-led Supreme Court is using its shadow docket like a sledgehammer against democracy on Trump’s behalf.
Recent generations have never seen anything like this, as the worst president in American history surpasses his first term as the worst president in American history. Millions are justifiably bothered and bewildered, and Trump’s return to the White House is still several months shy of a year.
If many are mired in feelings of doom in a country that seems unrecognizable, it’s because we haven’t witnessed anything like this. And so long as the Trump administration remains in power, things will only get worse.
Of course, we’ve known national horrors like Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 6, 2021. We’ve lived through white supremacist massacres at a Buffalo supermarket, a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Walmart in El Paso, and a historic Black church in Charleston, S.C. This nation continues to have more mass shootings than any other country in the world.
Threads of fascism have always been woven into this nation’s flawed and incomplete democracy. Jim Crow laws thrived for nearly a century after the end of the Civil War and barred Black people from their constitutional rights as American citizens.
People of color continue to live under what those least affected accept as racial profiling, which the Supreme Court’s conservatives recently and temporarily endorsed as a tool for federal immigration enforcement. (Check my Maine Writer substack article at this site here- SCOTUS and the Nuremberg Laws.)
As Americans, we are the descendants of those who fought against codified racism and for suffrage. We are the children of the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, and the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott that started in December 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus as the law dictated.
We are the beneficiaries of warriors known and unknown who gave their lives but never sold their souls to move this recalcitrant nation closer to its promise of “a more perfect union.”
In this moment, Americans of conscience now charged with meeting these hard times with determination, courage, and eyes toward a future that this malignant administration has made feel further out of reach than ever.
To say “we’ve been through this before” is to diminish the dangerous churn of current events. Most Americans today — excluding those who fled autocratic regimes for the promise of freedom here — have never lived under fascism. But Trump is destroying the Constitution as blithely as he destroyed the White House Rose Garden and replaced it with a tacky patio.
To fight against what Trump is doing to democracy and America requires recognition that his willfully catastrophic actions are a stark departure from all that has come before. History may serve as a guide, but its echoes and outcomes alone won’t save us.
P.S. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.😳😧😰
Reader response: Thank you, Renée Graham, for calling out the denialism, minimization of reality, and cataclysmic head-in-the-sand mentality that has washed over this country. The visceral horror of eroding democracy has proven too much for many to bear. And so, just like when one’s child is on drugs, one’s partner is cheating, or one’s business is failing, people are reverting to “this too shall pass.” Or “we’ve been here before.”
For too many Americans, if they allowed themselves to fully grasp reality, they would fall apart. The anxiety and looming sense of hopelessness would be overwhelming. One can only hope that luminaries in the media continue to try to break through the country’s willful blindness, because democracy is worth fighting for.
From Elaine Mintzer in Merrimack, New Hampshire
Labels: Boston Globe, Elaine Mintzer, mass shootings, Merrimack, Nazism, New Hampshire, Renée Graham, Rosa Parks, T.S. Eliot
posted by Juliana L'Heureux | 2:26 PM
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