Again, Our Institutions Will Not Save Us

I know I'm coming across as an alarmist but I truly do believe that there is still far too many in the media, in Congress, in business, and among our fellow citizens who have this unshakeable belief that our institutions will save us from the worst authoritarian tendencies of Trump/Bannon. I'll just give three examples but there are many more out there that I could also include. I am not trying to be critical of those I highlight here, only use them as examples as to how widespread this feeling is.

Even as Trump was being inaugurated, Josh Marshall wrote a piece in which he said this, "But as I wrote a few days ago in a somewhat different context, we should have more faith in our values, our history and our country. America, in all its greatness, its variousness, its customs and history is far, far greater than any President. And that is not just some generic or abstract statement." To give Marshall credit, he was far more focused on the power of the American citizens to stop Trump than just relying on our institutions, saying, "A President has little power without popular support. I don't believe that a President can change the country, on his own, the way many fear that he will."

In today's NY Times, David Sanger writes, "Perception is different from reality. It is possible that when viewed from a distance of a few years, Mr. Trump’s pronouncements about 'extreme vetting' and his rush to push some of America’s most experienced career diplomats out of their jobs will look like a first-week blitz intended to send a message to the world that he meant what he said when he talked about 'America First.'" That is, I believe, wishful thinking. It is totally contradicted by everything Trump has done in his career and campaign. And it seems to blissfully ignore the brazen flouting of the law that Trump has already engaged in, from the refusal to divest his business to the continued refusal to comply with federal court orders regarding the immigration ban to putting Bannon on the NSC's Principals Committee without Senate approval.

Representative Gerry Connolly, a Democrat who was one of three Congressman trying to see detainees at Dulles Airport on Sunday morning and was blocked by the CPB, said, "This remains a nation of laws, not of men." I have heard similar themes from experts and pundits in the last day or so. But at the very moment Connolly was saying those very words, the CPB was in direct violation of a federal court order. And, even as of this morning, it is still unclear whether the CPB is actually complying.

In Masha Gessen's essential primer for dealing with an autocracy, the third rule is "institutions will not save you". Gessen specifically warns Americans that our institutions are not nearly as strong as we think and are largely "enshrined in political culture rather than in law, and all of them—including the ones enshrined in law—depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill their purpose and uphold the Constitution". We are only ten days into the Trump presidency and already Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution and his administration, at least for a period of time and may still be, actively ignoring a federal court order. If we are relying on Republicans in Congress to stand up to Trump's illegal actions, I think the deafening silence we have heard on his conflicts of interest and on the illegal aspects of the immigration ban should give a clear idea about that futility of that hope. If we are relying on the Supreme Court, the Bush v. Gore, Hobby Lobby, and Obamacare decisions should tell you all you need to know. Perhaps the only hope on the Court, especially after whatever disaster Trump manages to put on the bench, will be that John Roberts has some concern about his legacy. That is not much to pin your hopes on.

Tom Pepinsky, an Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University, has a wonderful article on Americans' ignorance about what living under an authoritarian government looks like. "The mental image that most American harbor of what actual authoritarianism looks like is fantastical and cartoonish. This vision of authoritarian rule has jackbooted thugs, all-powerful elites acting with impunity, poverty and desperate hardship for everyone else, strict controls on political expression and mobilization, and a dictator who spends his time ordering the murder or disappearance of his opponents using an effective and wholly compliant security apparatus...The reality is that everyday life under the kinds of authoritarianism that exist today is very familiar to most Americans. You go to work, you eat your lunch, you go home to your family. There are schools and businesses, and some people 'make it' through hard work and luck. Most people worry about making sure their kids get into good schools. The military is in the barracks, and the police mostly investigate crimes and solve cases. There is political dissent, if rarely open protest, but in general people are free to complain to one another. There are even elections...Everyday life in the modern authoritarian regime is, in this sense, boring and tolerable. It is not outrageous." This is exactly why it is so important that we do not normalize ourselves to Trump's illegal behavior, why we must resist relentlessly. The path of least resistance is to just "go along, get along" and that will be the path to the destruction of our values and our democracy.

Pepinsky ends his piece by noting "You know that you are no longer living in a democracy because the elections in which you are participating no longer can yield political change". Considering that the popular vote winner has "lost" two elections in the last 16 years, the extreme Republican gerrymandering, and the fact that the Senate is controlled by Republicans even though more Americans voted for Democratic Senators are striking indicators that our democracy is slipping away. If we allow Trump/Bannon and the GOP to normalize the illegal actions of the executive branch, it will surely be lost for good.