Scenes from America that were only seen in fallow democracies
The riven country that Trump leaves behind reminds us of eternal vigilance being the price of liberty
There are 25,000 well-armed troops—the equivalent of up to six brigades—in military fatigues who have cordoned off the nation’s capital. Big barriers have been set up near key installations to prevent unauthorized entry. A truck driver carrying live ammunition, trying to enter an area he’s not authorized to, has been detained. Senior military commanders are vetting the troops, just in case some of them might turn rebellious or violent the day the new president is to be sworn in. Twelve guards have been removed.
Senators who continued to challenge the new president’s election remain unrepentant, even as major businesses have begun to distance themselves from those stubborn naysayers. The outgoing president has been quiet, but if this is the silence before a storm of rage, or the inevitable whimper, nobody can tell. The nation is on tenterhooks. A fire that burnt some belongings of the homeless was sufficiently alarming for the authorities to impose a lockdown, just in case it was an external threat.
I could be describing the capital of a country new to democracy, new to transition, new to the idea of respecting the will of the people. As a reporter, I have seen such scenes in some other capitals, where a coup seemed imminent, where parliaments risked being stormed, where peaceful demonstrators were shot. It feels surreal to be writing this about the United States of America, an uninterrupted democracy since its founding, used to uneventful transitions throughout its history. It isn’t a perfect democracy by any means—it took decades before it extended voting rights to every citizen, and its politicians continue to meddle with rules and tinker with the system to figure out new ways to deny voting rights to some, disenfranchising some without a fixed address, penalizing those who cannot vote in person, disproportionately impacting those who look different from an idealized norm.
The grim view of Washington DC reads like a chapter from a dystopian novel. Americans are used to such images elsewhere; to see such heightened alert, and that too, to ward off a threat within from fellow citizens who believe in an alternative universe, is both chastening and sobering.
This is the America Donald Trump is leaving behind, his lasting legacy—a nation where millions distrust the system. The insurgents who attempted to take over the US Capitol on 6 January did not only include grownups in fancy dress, with Viking headgear and furry overalls; they included off-duty law enforcement officers; employees of corporations; even veterans of the US armed forces. A 22-year old woman allegedly wanted to steal Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop and sell it to Russians. There was a newly-elected state assemblyman. Their ordinariness shows the longer term threat to democracy.
To be sure, American institutions withstood Trump’s more egregious assaults, but nothing can be taken for granted. In the 4th century Before the Common Era, in the second Philippic, Demosthenes warned against despots, saying, “There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies, as against despots. What is it? Distrust." He meant the distrust of a despot, but many Americans distrusted the system and the process with which a despot can be removed. In nurturing such conspiratorial thinking, cultivating it, encouraging it, spreading it, and making it mainstream, Trump led. But he was enabled by senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, media organizations such as Fox and others with even less credible reputations, brainwashing cult-like supporters who believe in a universe where paedophiles control the Democratic Party and the earth may as well be flat and the moon made of cheese. “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance," John Philpot Curran wrote in 1790, since then abbreviated to “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" and misattributed to Thomas Jefferson.
Freedoms cannot be taken for granted. Maintaining a democracy is a constant struggle. Trump surrounded himself with loyalists and family, and tried to turn a democracy into something feudal, often acting like a monarch. In the late 18th century, at the US Constitution convention, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" Franklin replied: “A republic, if you can keep it."
Keeping that republic is the task before Joe Biden. It requires reassertion of values, and a return to decency. But it also requires a firm commitment to the rule of law, and accountability. Biden takes over at an extremely challenging time. A nation that hasn’t been able to mourn the 400,000 Americans who have died in the pandemic, a devastated economy, and a sharply divided society, making those who differ with one another distrust one another. Biden has known losses—tragic deaths in his family—and defeat (his two earlier runs for candidacy failed). But he overcame setbacks, served as vice-president to America’s first president who wasn’t Caucasian, and chose the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India as his vice-president.
Now he has to heal the nation. It seems America is in safe hands.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in New York. Read Salil’s previous Mint columns at www.livemint.com/saliltripathi
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