I know what you’re thinking. Doesn’t RDI’s Democracy Brief usually come out on Thursdays? Wasn’t the next edition due out July 25?
Reading this post today is probably the biggest shock since… yesterday, when Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race. Or when a would-be assassin shot Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. That was nine days ago.
The breakneck succession of historical developments over the past few weeks is a bit unsettling. I’m reminded of that old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” There’s no question that our current political moment is “interesting,” but I go back and forth as to whether it’s more reminiscent of a dystopian novel or a crude satire. Maybe both.
The debate over Biden’s candidacy that rocked the Democratic Party in recent days should have happened a year ago. But the fact that the party reconsidered their nominee (a sitting president, no less!), however belatedly, is cause for optimism about the future of our democracy because it demonstrates that many Americans still understand that no leader is beyond reproach and that presidents are mortals just like the rest of us. Meanwhile, the public is no longer bound to a rematch that nobody—perhaps other than the nominees themselves—wanted.
Now, to Ancient History: The Trump Assassination Attempt.
One of the most difficult circles to square in the days since the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump have been simultaneous calls to lower the political temperature and demands to boldly highlight threats to our institutions.
After Trump was nearly killed in Pennsylvania earlier this month, many public figures on both sides of the aisle have called for “lowering the temperature.” For their part, some of Trump’s most avid supporters attributed the assassination attempt to criticisms of the former president as “authoritarian” or “anti-democratic.”
Do they have a point?
There’s a crass Yiddishism I find myself turning to as we navigate this complicated question—as di bubbe volt gehat beytsim volt zi gevain mayn zaidah—if grandma had balls, she’d be grandpa. A little juvenile, sure, but I think it offers some wisdom for our current political moment.
It’s true that accusing someone of having authoritarian sympathies, invoking parallels with the darkest periods in our history, and saying that you not only disagree with them but that they pose a threat to democracy can inspire extreme behavior.
In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated amid a climate of incitement, with protesters holding up effigies of Rabin clad in the black uniform of the Nazi SS.
In 2020, rioting broke out in cities across the country following the murder of George Floyd as demonstrators cursed “AmeriKKKa,” as if to say America was just as racist then as it was during the Jim Crow era.
That same year, right-wing militants plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, while detractors—including Donald Trump—dragged her state’s controversial COVID lockdown as authoritarian. If they accepted the argument that Governor Whitmer was adopting dictatorial powers, it’s certainly possible that the would-be kidnappers truly thought of themselves as freedom fighters.
These are just a couple of examples. And here’s the catch: Neither Rabin nor Whitmer were actually anti-democratic. That’s not a commentary on any of these individuals’ policies or philosophies. But they respected the transfer of power. They were not disputing election results. They did not seek to weaponize policy and government authority against their domestic political opponents. Meanwhile, the wholesale condemnation of the United States as an illegitimate, racist state represents a gross distortion of our past and our present.
So I come back to that Yiddishism. If grandma had balls she’d be grandpa. And if Donald Trump did not openly aspire to be “dictator for a day” or, try to overturn the election results, leading to threats against his own vice president (good luck, J.D.!), then it would absolutely be unfair and incendiary to say he puts our democratic institutions at risk. But he wouldn’t be Donald Trump then, would he?
The Dangers of False Equivalency
In our admirable quest to achieve objectivity, we should be careful not to veer into the territory of false equivalency. Not all of our politicians are demagogic firebrands, and so not all of them deserve to be labeled that way. But we have a responsibility to call a spade a spade, and we shouldn’t be afraid to highlight instances when someone uses authoritarian rhetoric.
After nearly a decade with Trump on the national political scene, it’s time to abandon the fantasy that he will somehow transform into someone fundamentally different from who he has always been. A few starry eyed pundits predicted that his RNC speech last week would deliver a changed man, humbled by his near-death experience. Instead, we were treated to a self-serving, rambling, Qaddafi-length speech that was, if nothing else, classic Donald Trump.
So how is saying all of this compatible with lowering the political temperature?
The key is highlighting that any concerns about the issues outlined above can be dealt with at the ballot box. Far from resolving anything, political violence in a free and democratic country (which, for all its warts, America remains) brings us one step closer to authoritarianism. When we turn to guns, bombs, and knives over votes, placards, and petitions, we are conceding that our institutions can’t address our problems. People turn to killing their kings, tsars, and warlords because there are no bloodless avenues for replacing the leader. But the killing never stops there.
This is why it’s absolutely critical for political leaders to ensure that the public retains confidence in our institutions. This is why we need to call out authoritarian actions and violent rhetoric in stark terms. And it is also why we have to sanctify the peaceful democratic process in America. We must have a high bar to judge that someone poses a threat to our democracy, and even when someone clears that bar, we recognize that threat while still disavowing violence against them precisely because we are a democracy.
It is possible to believe that someone’s actions are incompatible with the principles that underpin the American republic without believing that those actions justify physically harming them. None of these ideas are mutually exclusive—they are, simply put, imperatives of living in a free society.
