THE COMING STRUGGLE

I watched the first night of the national Democratic convention last night, and was much impressed both with the quality of the speakers and the unity of their message--the urgent necessity to bring about a massive, radical change in this November's election. The vaunted democracy of this already grievously wounded country is unlikely to survive another four years of Tr*mp and Tr*mpism. Every institution that undergirds our national stability has been under attack for now nearly four years. Many of our once respected institutions have succumbed. The Justice Department itself has been co-opted, rendering us seemingly powerless to protect ourselves from further, continuing attacks. Most recently, of course, the attack is on the postal service and the electoral process itself.

Born in England before the Second World War, I was attracted to the United States by what I believed to be its democracy with a small "d"--its rejection of the tired old oppressive structures of class and privilege in favor of a still-expanding embrace of universal rights. I was not naive enough to believe, even then, that the dream of freedom and equality for all had been achieved; far from it. But I did believe it to be a goal that most Americans agreed was of nationally defining importance to pursue. 

I have watched the erosion of that promise with increasing dismay in the course of the past half century, and yet I still find it hard to believe what I have been witnessing with my own eyes in the past three and a half years. Tr*mpism has been on its way for longer than most of us are ready to admit, but it is nothing less than astounding to see how quickly our accepted norms and institutions have crumbled under this president's transparently corrupt, malignant exercise of power. Concerned only with its own political advantage, the long-ascendant conservatism of the far right-wing has willingly stepped aside and acquiesced to the autocratic impulses of a leader who has effortlessly harnessed the power of outright falsehood and deception.

Former Vice President Biden and his Democratic supporters offer the alternative of decency, reason, and compassion. Their guiding light, if their rhetoric is to be believed, is the values that informed the origins of this democracy: the rights of individuals (the "pluribus") tempered by a sense of enlightened responsibility for the whole (the "unum")--including, importantly, those of one's fellow citizens. All of them, no matter color, creed, and so on... We have now reached a pitch where we must expect the next few months to be a period of painful, distressing, sometimes angry struggle. The outcome will show which vision of America will prevail.