Attribution: Clare Black from Morley, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Geoff Carter
As a boomer who grew up during what was arguably America’s golden age, I still find it almost unfathomable that our country is teetering so dangerously close to a totalitarian takeover. At the time I came up in the sixties and seventies—with the exception of the Vietnam War debacle—I thought we were a country that championed (despite the best efforts of some of our less enlightened citizens) equal rights and justice for all. The fight for civil rights, equal voting rights, and the middle-class safety net were in full force and seemed to be all but won.
It was during this time that President Lyndon Baines Johnson pushed his “Great Society” agenda. He introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ensure equal representation for all American citizens. He pushed through Medicare, Medicaid, The Economic Opportunity Act, The Food Stamp Act of 1964 to assist the less fortunate members of our society. He also worked to strengthen environmental policy, NASA, and consumer protection programs.
I was a child when these reforms were implemented, and as a member of one of the most privileged generations of the world, I assumed that this was the way it was supposed to be and the way it would always be. I took them for granted
While voices in the background decried the welfare state, warned that Social Security and Medicare would bankrupt our country, that public schools were a vast black hole sucking up taxpayer money, and that immigrants would destroy this fabric of our society, I—as I became an adult—assumed that these were voices from the fringe, that in no way would our way of life, our freedoms, ever be at risk, but I was wrong. It turns out we were asleep at the wheel. Our country, our democracy, is at risk.
But, as pointed out by Heather Cox Richardson in her brilliant series of essays in Letters From An American, there have always been elements of American society—dating back to the antebellum South—that believed America should be ruled by a wealthy elite, typically, no always, a white male elite. Nineteenth-century slaveowners believed so and fought a war to protect the barbaric institution that sustained their opulent lifestyle. They lost and slavery was forever banned by the Constitution, but that malignant creed of elitist ideology lived on. We saw it rear its ugly head again during Reconstruction and again durng the Gilded Age. That time, it was Teddy Roosevelt who busted the trusts and brought the elite back down to Earth.
They’re back. Like a swarm of ravenous rats, the men who would commandeer the wealth of this country and pillage it for their own benefit were never quite eliminated. They multiplied, and like they rats they are, they worked in darkness, in sewers, and in silence while decent Americans slept.
This same breed of rodents in the Deep South worked to keep African Americans from casting their votes during Reconstruction and beyond. Illegal use of poll taxes and literacy tests were used to intimidate and discourage Black voters. Johnson’s Voting Rights Act of 1964 put a stop to this, but today’s Supreme Court just recently eviscerated that law. They took away some American’s right to vote.
The Republican party, who we can thank for this court, is doing the same thing this very moment. They are trying to purge voter rolls, to stop early voting, and to eliminate voting by mail altogether. Some state districts have shut down polling places, making it more difficult for some citizens to make it to their local ballot boxes. Donald Trump is trying to coerce Congress into passing the SAVE Act, which would require citizens to prove their citizenship at the polling place with either a birth certificate or a passport. Women whose names have been changed due to marriage—and do not match the names on their birth certificates—would have to jump through additional hoops to prove their citizenship. For those who would have to replace a birth certificate or get a passport, it would amount to a modern poll tax.
History is repeating itself. Again. Although I have nothing to do with these regressive and malicious beliefs, I still, in a sense, feel some personal responsibility, that I have failed as an American citizen, failed to see the oncoming danger of totalitarianism, failed to see what Trump really is—not a buffoon or a snake-oil salesman, but an avaricious parasite willing to destroy our democracy in order to line his own pockets.
You can’t say we weren’t warned. In 1998, Hillary Clinton warned of a “vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president” (Politico).
Although speaking about attacks against her husband at the time, she might have been talking about the nascent neo-conservative ideology that spawned Project 2025 or the Christian Nationalist movement that has fostered distrust and hatred of the government. It was all there, but none of us took it seriously.
We’re all responsible for the rise of this evil.
Before Trump, as middle-class Americans, we were comfortable, complacent, spoiled, and more than a little arrogant. We believed that although the American ideal was invincible, and that the Constitution is an elastic document designed to change with the times, that the heart of the American Idea was untouchable. We believed that we were leaders of the free world that carried the beacon of freedom for the entire world. We weren’t wrong then, but we are now. Our present administration has made us the laughingstock of the world.
Some of us didn’t realize how deeply the roots of racism still ran in the country. We underestimated the infinite greed and callousness of those who seek to destroy our democracy. We underestimated the cruelty, racism, and hatred born of this greed and which are necessary to sustain it.
Maybe this couldn’t have been helped, but personally, I can’t help feeling that part of this is my fault. I watched as a lot of this happened and did nothing. I thought it would go away or blow over.
I let Ronald Reagan and Republicans sustain the myth of trickle-down economics, that cutting taxes for the wealthy would result in economic growth whose effects would “trickle down” to the middle class. It never worked—not in the fifty years they’ve been working it.
I didn’t say anything when Mitch McConnell prevented Barack Obama from appointing a (presumably liberal) Supreme Court Justice.
I didn’t say anything the racist cartoons and comments about Barack Obama and his family surfaced on social media. I assumed it would go away.
I didn’t say anything when the Unite the Right rally consisting of white supremacists, KKK members, neo-confederates and white nationalists marched on Charlottesville carrying tiki torches and spewing racist hate.
I didn’t say anything when Donald Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”.
I didn’t say anything when the Republican-led Congress stood back and let Trump intimidate them.
I didn’t say anything when the contemptible rhetoric about immigrants, women, and LGBTQ+ citizens was happening.
I voted. I voted against all this, and I commiserated with my friends about how terrible things were getting, but looking back, I don’t think that was enough. I should have known this was where we were heading.
I was appalled on January 6th and even more appalled when the man responsible for it was re-elected.
Yes, this has been a systemic failure. Our government has been commandeered and manipulated (and bought)—just as it was in the antebellum South and the Gilded Age—by the very rich and powerful elite.
These one-percenters bought the Republican senators who approved the conservative majority of the Supreme Court. They poured millions of dollars into Trump’s campaigns, in effect buying the presidency for Donald Trump. In return (quid pro quo), Trump has slashed their taxes, eased federal regulations, and consolidated their power base. They bought the government.
I was complacent in my belief that American ideals of equality and democracy were somehow untouchable. If anything, what this ugly episode in our history should teach us is that we must guard our rights, our liberties, and ourselves from those malignant few who would take over our country and dismantle our democracy.
We defeated these elements before and we will do so again, but afterwards, we cannot afford to forget how and why they came to power and safeguard ourselves from letting it ever happen again.
We must take responsibility for the future of America. We must watch for those who would steal our freedom, and we must see the truth in front of our noses. And we must act.
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