As I write this, I am watching the ceremonies taking place in France memorializing the American heroes of D-Day. Those now approaching the age of one hundred who helped to liberate Europe from the scourge of authoritarianism and tyranny still stand in the eternal honor that they earned in battle eighty years ago today.
At the same time, I read in this poll that Republicans have suddenly changed their “minds” on the acceptability of a felon serving as president. Only 17 percent of them approved of such a disgraceful thing in April. But less than two months later, 58 percent now support putting a convicted criminal—their anointed savior, Donald Trump—in the White House. The self-serving self-degradation of the Republican cult could not be on clearer display. The shriveled souls of these pathetic lickspittles wear the badges of eternal disgrace that they are earning each day, each hour, each minute they continue to abet the abysmal depravity of their Dear Leader.
It is difficult to hold these two American realities together. On the one hand, Americans are decent and honorable, committed to justice, self-sacrificing, and willing to give their lives for the freedom of others. On the other hand, Americans are indecent and disgraceful, committed to selfishness, grasping, and willing to take anything from anyone for their own aggrandizement.
Yet the dichotomy has been there from the beginning.
The Anti-federalists, the original opponents of the Constitution, did everything they could to stop the United States from “establishing justice,” as the Constitution puts it. When they lost the fight to squash ratification, they used their power and wealth to hobble the fledgling nation and try to prevent the passage of equitable laws that would apply to them.
The Southern slaveowners seceded from the Union rather than give up their immoral exploitation of human beings for free labor. They tried to destroy the nation to get their way, and in so doing, forced Decent America to destroy them.
The Jim Crow South tyrannized black people for a hundred years, abridging their rights and treating them as non-citizens. By arrogantly forcing their hateful policies of segregation down the throats of the nation, they forced Decent America to undo their apartheid regimes, establish civil rights firmly, and pass laws to punish the Southern States for their immorality.
And now we face the latest resurgence of the disgraceful underbelly of America. The perverted minority—the selfish, corrupt, childish, religion-addled, arrogant, cheating, lying, stealing, bullying, irrational, odious minority—is trying to force its farcically cartoonish, bloated, loud-mouthed, braying, hyper-narcissistic, vengeful, deranged, vain, tyrannical, orange, and criminal buffoon down the throats of Decent America.
The more America shows them that it does not want their depravity, the more they rave. The just and proper adjudication of Trump as a criminal for just a few of his crimes has ignited their irrational rage. Now they threaten all their perceived political enemies going back decades, trying to stir up their most unscrupulous officials to indict Democrats regardless of evidence—a typical response of frightened bullies. Their calls for retribution are depressingly predictable, because they merely make manifest on a yet more outrageous plane the law-breaking confederacy of Republicans. They fall right in line behind their law-breaking villain of a leader.
To be fair, Republicans are helping Decent America to destroy them. The more ranting their screeds, the more abhorrent their threats, the more shrill their voices, the more deformed their faces, the easier it is for our fellow citizens to see how unfit they are for positions of power.
The perverseness of Republicans demanding power to do injustice is the modern form of the threat to American democracy. Decent America is not called to sacrifice our lives to save democracy, as the D-Day heroes did. We are merely called to remove the scofflaws from positions of power. We only have to vote. We only have to un-elect Republicans, reduce them to a powerless minority instead of an imperious minority. We only have to destroy them as a political force in order to stop them from forcing their immorality on the rest of us.
This is progress. We do not need to die to save democracy. We can do it just by withdrawing our consent to criminals and supporters of criminals holding public office. On the other side of the upcoming election we could finally be free from from the disgrace of Republican turpitude.
This is how Decent America stands up for democracy today. This is how we honor our long line of Decent American heroes who saved democracy in the past. This is how we earn the right to tell our Decent American grandchildren that we saved democracy in our age.
We choose honor and trample disgrace.