At this portentous moment, I recall the gist of a dispatch by
the renowned American journalist William L. Shirer, who eye witnessed the
ascent of Nazi Germany as a correspondent during the 1930’s, conveying his
emotion at hearing the news on April 30, 1945 that Hitler was dead and Germany
was on the edge of capitulation. I cannot now locate the exact quote from
Shirer I was looking for, but the gist of what he wrote that day was that while
evil would certainly go on existing in the world, at least the particular form
of evil represented by Hitler and Nazism had been vanquished and would no
longer be able to cause massive death, genocide and destruction, At least
Hitler was dead and gone from the world, and, with his evil ideology crushed,
there was a chance for healing and better days to come.
I feel a similar sense
of profound relief and renewed hope at the news that Biden has narrowly
vanquished Trump and denied him another term in the White House. I realize the
parallels here are far from exact. No, Trump is not Hitler, and has not yet
committed genocide; though he is similarly a fascist impelled by a lust for absolute power and contempt for democratic governance. An equally important
difference is that Trump and Trumpism have not been destroyed in 2020 as Hitler
and Naziism were in 1945. On the contrary, Trump only narrowly lost the
election and maintains the fervid loyalty of close to half of the American
electorate despite his hateful demeanor and evident bigotry; his tearing
immigrant children away from their parents, selling out the country to Putin
and readiness to imperil hundreds of thousands of lives by irresponsibly
holding unmasked super spreader rallies from the country.
Despite, his threats to overturn the results of the election through the courts, Trump will almost certainly be evicted from the White House on January 20. Nevertheless, he will almost certainly continue to claim he was cheated out of victory and will seek to mount a comeback for 2024. With or without Trump in the White House, Trumpism is unfortunately alive, well and deeply toxic. We have a long road ahead of us in terms of outreach to disaffected Americans who voted Trump and have been deluded by his siren song of white, working class empowerment.
And yet, consider how
infinitely worse things would have been if Trump had held the position he had
achieved on Election Night, and had prevailed in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Georgia and Arizona. That would have led in short order to the
extinguishing of American democracy. All of Trump’s authoritarian instincts
would then have been on steroids and fully enabled and we could have looked
forward in short order to his using the full power of the state to punish and
arrest his political enemies; to the extinguishing of the power of the legislative
branch, the snuffing out of the free press and so much more. In the streets,
Trump’s heavily armed Brownshirts, the militias, Proud Boys, QANON, etc. would
have been given full reign. Any hope of retarding the rush to incinerate our
precious planet would have been lost.
It is indeed a heavy blow not only that Trump almost won the election but that the GOP Senate majority will likely be maintained, making incremental gains for humane, desperately needed reforms. Obamacare stands in dire peril of being overturned by the Trumpian majority on the Supreme Court, with tens of million slated to lose health coverage in a pandemic. Roe v. Wade may now be reversed. And yet, thanks to the hard work and deep commitment of so many progressive and moderate activists; thanks to the courage and moral integrity of the Republican ‘Never Trumpers’; thanks to the fundamental decency of many who voted Trump in 2016, but realized their mistake and switched to Biden in 2020, we no longer have to fear waking up in a totalitarian America in 2021.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deserve great credit for an intelligent and dignified campaign, embodying empathy and elemental decency, and the coalition that supported them managed in the end to push them through and give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance for a decent future. As my friend Maggie Siddiqui, an American Muslim activist and Director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress. said in a conference call yesterday bringing together progressive interfaith activists of the Prayerful Democracy network; “Working together, we fought voter suppression and empowered each other,…united in our commitment to the premise that every human being has worth. We have a very long way to go, but we remain committed to the dream of building an inclusive democracy.”
What we finally achieved was Keeping Hope Alive. I spent the hours of 11 pm-5 AM on Election Night in a state of existential despair, fearing I was about to witness the snuffing out of human freedom for the remainder of my own lifetime. Despite having a wonderful life partner, a beautiful family and a lovely new home, I wasn’t sure I would find enough of a sense of consolation for the abolition of democracy to sustain my spirit. I felt I couldn’t bear to live in a 21st Century version of Orwell’s 1984; a place where I would have to fear that the consequences of whatever I write on Facebook might be midnight knock on the door from the police. Then I woke up from a fitful sleep around 7;15 AM to find that the vote from my wonderful college town of Madison, had flipped Wisconsin to Biden and there was still hope that we might yet escape Trumpian doom.
72 hours or so later, I can’t say I am feeling elated—I’m too exhausted for that—but simply, infinitely relieved. I now have a future worth living in and so do my loved ones and all our children and grandchildren. America has dodged the totalitarian bullet and we, as a society have saved ourselves for now—by the skin of our teeth. To paraphrase Rabbi Hillel, that is the essence of the matter and, at least for the moment, all the rest is commentary.
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