REALITY
No belief system – such as American democracy – can survive if the people no longer believe. And that is the danger and reality we face today.
That is the fact that Donald Trump understood better than any working politician anywhere in this country. Despising government, believing that those in it were ‘losers’ at best and liars at worst, Trump played that card from the moment he decided to run for President – until he had won. And seeing, if barely believing the result – he has played it ever since. And is playing it now for all it is worth.
How else can we explain the politicization of a killing pandemic – where those who still believed wore masks and those who did not, do not until this country has become alarmingly sick…more than any nation in the world.
Knowing the truth about Covid-19, as he trusted it with Bob Woodward who was writing a book about him and would not disclose it, Trump began a lie which not only included the entire Administration and Republican Governors across the nation but the group of scientists on his Covid Committee and the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
Controlling these elements as if he were a modern Caesar, he knew and said that these men and women only cared about themselves and their careers and would do what he demanded because they believed he was in control of their fate.
He knows that millions have given up on government…and this disbelief carries across States, political parties, whites and all people of color. The just completed Presidential campaign proves the point as he has received far more votes from people of color than he did in 2016.
And it is all about his attitude towards government and he has found and developed his audience accordingly.
Could it be that this disbelief in government is so overwhelming that it simply ignores the human condition – the reality that we first seek to protect ourselves rather than anyone else?
Because we certainly ignored the advice that wearing a mask and keeping a safe distance would provide others with safety. Should the advice have been that wearing a mask would provide us with safety? Yes…but it came too little, too late.
The refusal of the Federal Government to develop a national plan of operation and to deliver a constant stream of valuable information as data became clearer is behind us now. Leaving it to Governors was a shrewd cop-out and we see the devastating result.
It was all based on the reality that people no longer believed or believed in government and so the “more government” the less the belief.
The element of the human condition – that as humans we first think to protect ourselves – was totally absent and now the resistance to masks and the pleading of Governors in States across the country seems feeble despite the crisis.
As private parties with no masks continue among the young and those who should know better – and the insistence on gatherings during the holidays seems inevitable, those getting the virus now have no one to blame but themselves.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
The assassination of John F. Kennedy sixty years ago caused the development of a series of conspiracy theories which became fodder for a number of well-read books and a serious government investigation led by the well-respected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren.
Not everyone believed the massive document-the Warren Report- which was produced after the investigation.
Today we have the ungoverned reality of the Internet and social media to flood our minds with all kinds of stories good and bad.
And more than that, we have a public so disillusioned about government, that normally reasonable people believe everything- EVERYTHING – they see on social media.
Knowing this reality has helped the Administration put serious doubts about our election system in the minds of tens of millions of Americans …disbelief again coming on like a raging pandemic all its own.
The justice system will again deal with the present as it has in the past but this disbelief is becoming a larger and larger part of what America has become and with it a growing difficulty in governing our nation.
Once there was the idea that differences could be worked through; compromises met, laws written accordingly.
That method is now a thing of the past. If politicians do not have to support laws, they do not have to defend their positions during an election…making them feel safe.
And so with careers in the balance we have less and less government.
And with it the growing disbelief in what exists.
This downward spiral, accompanied by an education system which has failed us for fifty years, is producing a result that seriously jeopardizes the good and best of America.
It should not be downplayed.
Nothing is accidental. Everything has causes and effects.
Our response to the pandemic has been catastrophic to date.
Is that to be the fate of our democracy?