(Any comments, please send them to dadofprince@gmail.com. Thanks!)
These past several years, I've tried to inform myself with reading hard facts. It hasn't been fun. But it's been necessary.
The toughest read so far, though, has been that of historian Heather Cox Richardson's Democracy Awakening. To remind us of what we must do to turn back this wave of injustice and authoritarianism, she must take us back to where it began and where it accelerated.
To do that, she must bring forward people whom we'd all like to forget: Kellyanne Conway and her comment about "alternative facts"; Chad Wolf; Paul Manafort (especially him, complicit in shenanigans deeper than any of us previously thought); Roger Stone and all his obnoxiousness; and so on. She must remind us of the damage they've done.
Of course, she must also remind us of the ongoing, relentless ugly attempts of ex- to literally take over America and demand unquestioning loyalty to none other than him, the prince of ugliness: conniving, conning, lying, cheating, insulting and law-breaking. By doing so, she exposes the Republican Party as nothing but sycophants, kneeling at his feet, existing only to please and satisfy him--the latter of which can't ever be done, though they are totally blind to it.
And to do that, she must remind us of the events of ex-'s woe begotten term as president, sewn with chaos, most of it intentional. As far as he's concerned, it still goes on incompleted. This time, he knows more about how the enormous weapon of government can be wielded. It has already been reported that he plans vengeance on his enemies, whether real or conjured (with him, it matters not). With the power he can retake, nothing is impossible anymore. Nothing.
So if you've read Richardson's blog posts before, you know what she's going to say or imply strongly: We're in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. The deepest, the greatest threat, since the Civil War.
And the causes are nearly the same: A lot of wealth concentrated in the hands of a privileged few; white supremacy; refusal to accept a valid presidential election result. The difference is that the president was Abraham Lincoln, one of the shrewdest, most intelligent people ever to hold the office. It's tough to imagine someone other than Lincoln trying to advance significant legislation through a Congress torn by secession, one that could be just as distracted as today's.
But then, we don't have Lincoln or anything near that. We have Joe Biden, a good man, though with an image problem of his own. No matter how significant his words might be, too many people aren't listening. They're watching him stumble across daises and walk constantly like, well, an old man, which he is.
Of course the presidency takes a great deal from a person; of course we can't expect quite the energy with which Biden began his term. But to look at him, the effect of the draining is pronounced. No, the age number itself is irrelevant. What it seems to indicate, though, is telling. It is hard to lead a country as large as ours with deeds alone, which Biden seems to be doing, Image matters, too. Richardson spends no time with this in her book, though.
The only real 20th Century comparison that Richardson makes is to bring in the effects of the presidency of Ronald Reagan--who, ironically, was reported to have lost some of his faculties for the last year and a half, or so, of his second term, which set off a blind, mindless adherence to private business as the solution to all the nation's problems--an adherence which definitely has taken hold today. She's right about that, of course, but doesn't delve deeply into it. Her blog, Letters from An American, occasionally does that, but not here in this book.
That's too bad. We also need a step-by-step rehash of how we got ourselves into the present predicament. That information might be tough to take--the neglect, the naïveté, the numerous cases of overlooking things that we should have taken more seriously. But it has to be considered. It's been a long time since Reagan was president, but his influence has gripped the Republicans like an iron fist. It's been twisted and distorted and manipulated, as many political ideas have. It has left us in an unenviable place.
Democracy Awakening is worth your while. It's impeccably well-researched. Heather Cox Richardson constantly finds a way to connect the past with what we do today in ways that offer a unique but accurate perspective. It is a piece of writing that's gripping reading and required to understand just what kind of debacle we're in. We need it now more than ever.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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