The Winter of Democracy
In Washington DC, over 20,000 soldiers occupy the capital the day before our unpeaceful presidential transition, while Trump — in his last hours in the White House — frantically stuffs the Defense Department, NSA and CIA with loyal moles, executes as many poor and black people as he can, and sells pardons to war criminals and rich felons at a closing day clip. In Russia, the astonishingly courageous dissident Aleksei Navalny gets thrown in prison again, following a kangaroo court hearing in a police station, immediately after he arrives home from a German hospital where he miraculously escaped death at the hands of Putin poisoners. Meanwhile, in Uganda, former rap star Bobi Wine is imprisoned inside his gated compound after challenging the suspicious election victory of Dictator for Life Museveni. Democracy is always a wilting flower, barely kept alive by a few heroic leaders and the people’s stubborn will.
The American people were aroused in 2020 — and remain so into 2021. Millions of people still fervently believe in the cartoon fascism of Donald Trump — a blind loyalty that bared its fangs on January 6. Meanwhile, record umbers of people — even in Georgia, God bless them — turned out at the polls to topple the toxic reign of Trump and Mitch McConnell. The electorate for and against democracy has never been so mobilized in my lifetime.
And now what about the Biden presidency? Will progressives go to sleep again, like we did after Barack Obama’s election? We know how that slumber turned into a national nightmare. Or will we stay mobilized, pressuring Biden to deliver on his economic, environmental and social promises — i.e. his progressive agenda, the only way to demobilize Trump’s populist base?
Putin’s Russia, Museveni’s Uganda — we were only two or three state vote counts away from continuing in that dark direction under a second Trump administration. The threat is still there — we can see it in the number of active-duty, reservist or retired military officers and soldiers involved in the bloody Capitol riot; in the far-right echo chamber that keeps alive the stab-in-the-back lies about the election; the members of Congress who pack guns and embrace wild QAnon theories about the world; and the ruthless demagogues who are willing to say or do anything to become the next Donald Trump.
Lady Liberty or the Tiger? The choice is still in the hands of the American people.
