President Biden is correct to warn our constitutional democracy is at stake in the 2024 election. But something else is at risk, too: the one, indivisible republic to which we pledge our allegiance when we salute the flag.
Democracy is how we administer a government of, by and for the people. But America’s soul lives in our commitment to serve our collective well-being, to respect one another and the diversity that freedom produces, and to honor the social contract that allows us to coexist peacefully and constructively.
We will see in the long primary election season that begins in Iowa today how much the American people care. Each caucus and primary vote will be a referendum on our republic. Votes for Donald Trump will endorse his vision of a much different country.
We know the character of government would change radically if he wins, because he tells us it will. The former president blithely states he would install authoritarian rule and use the nation’s military, intelligence apparatus and law enforcement agencies to suppress dissent. He jokes about throwing out the Constitution and becoming president for life, but we know it’s no joke.
If voters turn control of the House and Senate over to the Republicans in November, Congress won’t check and balance Trump’s abuses. With depressingly few exceptions, the entire incumbent contingent of congressional Republicans either lacks the desire, the character or the spine to oppose Trump.
We don’t yet know where the Supreme Court’s loyalties will lie. We will find out as it adjudicates the appeals it receives from Trump’s 91 felony charges, his claim that presidents are above all laws and whether his insurrection has disqualified him from serving in government again.
But there has been too little discussion so far about damage Donald Trump has done, and will continue to do, to America’s soul. From the day he announced his candidacy for president in 2015, he has been an accelerant of discord, violence and dissolution.
Presidents are more than the nation’s chief operating officer and commander in chief. They set America’s tone and exemplify its standards. After Trump’s first year as president, Gallup asked Americans how the presidency influences their lives. Strong majorities said presidents affect their overall happiness, fundamental attitudes about the nation, optimism about the future, satisfaction with the country’s direction and relationships with other people.
Trump’s influence has been perverse these past nine years. He has legitimized some of the American people’s worst impulses — racism, contempt for institutions, hyper-nationalism, intolerance, conspiracy-mongering, disregard for facts and political violence. He became — and remains — in effect commander in chief of armed anti-government militias and hate groups. The number of white nationalist hate groups grew 55 percent during his presidency.
Trump celebrates some of the world’s worst despots as role models. He relishes violations of common decency, even ridiculing people with disabilities and soldiers who died or sacrificed their freedom in democracy’s defense.
Trump has taught contempt for truth and truth-tellers. With his lies that Democrats stole the 2020 election, he persuaded thousands of Americans to believe that violent insurrection was their patriotic duty. His serial bullying sets the example for anonymous trolls and doxers who threaten the lives of those who dare stand up to him.
As Vox reports, “Across the board and around the country, data reveals that threats against public officials have risen to unprecedented numbers, to the point where 83 percent of Americans are now concerned about risks of political violence in their country. … Elected officials who dare defy the former president face serious threats to their well-being and to that of their families — raising the cost of taking an already difficult stand.”
The threat of violence is now normal in national affairs. TIME magazine reported last October that more than one in five Americans are “open to condoning political violence” and “the chaos unleashed on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, is going mainstream” with “seismic consequences for the country in ways neither party properly appreciates.”
A civil society relies on its members to honor the social contract that establishes moral and ethical rules of behavior. The contract’s terms can be explicit in laws or implicit in shared understandings of the behaviors that allow social harmony. The Constitution is a social contract, but so are our unwritten obligations to one another. We don’t cut in line. We don’t bully. We obey traffic laws because they keep us all safe. We pay it forward and give back. We understand that diversity grows in free societies, and we respect it. We don’t threaten other people and their families with violence because we disagree with them.
Trump’s behaviors are antithetical to social harmony. He and his supporters are shredding the contract — given more opportunity, they will rend it beyond repair. Trump’s interest in conflict and incivility is simple: It creates the atmosphere for a dictator to step in and restore order on his terms. Trump’s terms are those of a pathological narcissist.
In fact, three days after the insurrection, members of the World Mental Health Coalition warned that Donald Trump is “a grave danger to others” and exhibits “dangerous delusions of grandeur and paranoid ideations” with his claims the 2020 election was stolen, and his incitement of insurrection. The coalition recommended that Trump be removed from office.
So yes, our 250-year experiment in constitutional democracy is at stake in this year’s election. But so is our “one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.”
William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to “Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People,” and contributor to Democracy in a Hotter Time, named by the journal Nature as one of 2023’s five best science books. He is currently executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), a nonpartisan climate policy think tank unaffiliated with the White House.
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