Who is Worse?

By GENE NICHOL

Our political life these days presents a host of surprising quasi-philosophical questions.

Like, what’s worse, a political leader who constantly lies, cheats, demeans the vulnerable, presses racial hatred, promotes violence, assaults women, punishes truth-tellers, solicits felonies, continually and unapologetically violates the constitution, uses public power to enrich himself, bows down before the world’s tyrants, calls non-white countries s—- holes, betrays and demeans our allies, and trades government appropriations and military assets for foreign support of his own elections – or the politicians and activists who probably don’t delight in all those things but will rally behind them to achieve political power?

Or, who presents the greater evil, the most un-Christian man ever to become president of the United States – who stands as literal antithesis to the teachings of the New Testament – or the millions of fundamentalist Christians who rally to his camp in order to obtain the worldly power their religion rejects?

Or, the most pressing question of this day. Which is the more despicable, a national party that attacks the defining commitment to democracy that has purported to drive the unfolding American experiment for over two centuries; or a political party that is so spineless, so ineffective, so unprincipled and self-absorbed, so timid and accommodationist, that it can’t even be bothered to put up a fight on democracy’s behalf? Who is more blameworthy, in other words, the Republican anti-democratic, Seditionist Party, or the Democratic Party’s non-confrontational, hapless, go-along-to-get-along aiders and abettors of American demise?

Spoiler alert – I no longer have ready answers to any of these quandaries. But I fear, greatly, that Joe Biden and his Washington colleagues will consistently do less to defend the American democracy than Donald Trump and his henchmen will do to destroy it. As a result, both this president and the last one are seemingly headed for singular roles in our democratic undoing. Trump will wage a vile war in the destruction of the American constitution – Lincoln’s “last best hope of earth” – while Biden talks about Scranton and his daddy and his daily commutes on Amtrak, playing Nero’s fiddle to the flames’ engulfing and devastating rise.

Why do I say this? The central agenda of the Republican Party has now become the defeat of our foundational norms of majority rule and consent of the governed. In that cause, three tools are being readily deployed across the nation. The first, of course, is the denial of access to the ballot for its adversaries. The second is the stunning grant of power to (Republican) legislatures to overturn the results of elections they deplore. And the third is the selection of state election officials who will do the party’s bidding rather than exercise their legal obligation to assure independent elections. If the crusade succeeds, the free and fair election of 2020 will be the last.

In the face of this existential threat, Democrats stand idle. Joe Biden is reported to have told the Democratic caucus, even with such relentless, constitution-defying cheating, we’ll just have to “out organize them.” Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency, but they can’t be expected to defend the American democracy, or even themselves. (Like they can’t be expected to defend abortion rights, as the Supreme Court moves to reverse Roe.) “We’re Democrats” is the apparent claim, we don’t actually do anything. It might piss someone off.

It’s like Joe Biden took a walk around the national mall, surveyed the monuments, and concluded that we pay tribute to Lincoln, Roosevelt and Washington because they remained above the fray.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2021

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