The Wikiness

Next Tuesday’s election will manifest a divergence of belief around our national government–not belief in the value of specific policies, but belief in the established norms and institutions of our government themselves, in whether the game of republican democracy should even continue. 

One side more-or-less still believes in equality of persons before the law, accountability, transparency in public office, and progress in making lives meaningful and productive for all kiinds of people. It’s based on respect for the rules of the game. It trusts that our self-governing apparatus still works, and while the USA may no longer be the most powerful nation on earth, it should support democratic movements and pluralistic societies at home and abroad. 

The other side believes our system corrupted beyond repair, and that only a bold changemaker can catalyze a return to American “greatness.” It plans to break the current system to fix it. Believers on this side have waged a campaign spreading uncertainty, the enemy of belief, about what used to be “our” institutions.  This side has discovered that it’s not against the law to cast doubt on the integrity of elections, albeit without evidence. 

And since public schools have failed to ensure that most Americans think critically for themselves, and since Americans now silo themselves from any wider marketplace of ideas, the aspersions worked:  only a quarter of the population has confidence in the federal government. Americans’ belief in their institutions is at an all-time low (see chart).  People believe that their vote is being denied or manipulated. “Why believe anything they say?” is then a logical corollary.

When I was a teen, there were American Nazis and inflation, but both parties shared a belief in norms and rules that enforced transparency in office, personal accountability, and respect for the game. There was implicit agreement: f you violated the rules, you’d be penalized, your selfish impulses checked by a balance of powers. The working of the system in 1974-77 inspired confidence in teenager me, a confidence now utterly shaken.

When was the last time a crime in the White House had real consequence for a president? It wasn’t Bush Jr.’s lying us into a costly, unwinnable war.  It wasn’t Bill Clinton, lying about his sexual abuse of power. He escaped impeachment with no conviction and he’s honored at the DNC. His “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” and “what is the meaning of is?” defense saved his job, but it should have been a signal to those of us who lived through Watergate, and imbibed its ethos of integrity. The times, they had a-changed.

The last American president to play by the rules and resign for malfeasance was Richard Nixon. He knew that the evidence–the hours of oval office recordings demonstrating his corruption–would be impossible to deny. He stood naked, and resigned. And even though Warren-commision insider Gerald Ford pardoned him, and Nixon served no punishment, his removal from office must be where my lingering belief in the rule of law originated. 

We live in a country now where for about half the residents, “truth” means fealty and constancy, not objective concordance with reality. The faith of this half brings them comfort. They trust a godlike father figure to protect them and champion their interests, even as their demonstrably sociopathic strongman broadcasts authoritarian intentions. 

Yet a critically thinking American citizen in 2024 could also abstain from aligning with the so-called progressive side noting the appalling lack of action based on their core beliefs of respect for human dignity. That they could and should have been doing so much more than they have inspires the question, “Why vote for more of the same?”  

I respond with a conciliatory argument. While certainly tainted with corruption and willing to affiliate with sexual abusers, the democrats will maintain the machinery of state that, for all its flaws, still governs the most powerful economy on the planet, and provides much of the world with a sort of leadership that has avoided world war pretty well. And the other side, now a cult of personality, will make all governmental action transactional and mercenary, eliminating the enforced empathy of social welfare and safety nets and creating a squid war future that no one wants for their kids.

In other words, it ain’t perfect, but let’s not let its imperfections justify killing our experiment with freedom and justice for all.