Loving Imagination –a Detour
We are watching a coup destroy our democracy.
I admit it: I didn’t start this publication to write about politics, though the impetus was our imminent takeover by a president who promised to be a dictator from day one. I’d been thinking about writing here for a very long time. There are a lot of people with expertise in law, politics, and history who are writing—and writing well—about our constitutional crisis and our precipitate slide into authoritarianism. I didn’t plan to add to that list (though I can suggest some good ones if you want). I still don’t.
But here’s the thing. As The Washington Post used to say, democracy dies in darkness.
Darkness comes in many forms. Erasing history. Excluding people. Dehumanizing others. Inverting language. Denying reality. Disparaging imagination. Promoting cruelty.
Three weeks into the new Trump regime, we are here, in darkness.
In this darkness, we are witnessing a coup. It’s hard to see in the dark. Darkness is real, and all around us. So much darkness. But friends, we must not lose track of what the darkness is covering. It is a coup, taking place right in front of us. An unelected individual—an immigrant who is barred from holding the office of president or vice president, a multi-billionaire who used tens of billions of dollars in government aid to launch his most lucrative business ventures, whose companies are under investigation by numerous federal agencies for violating safety, environmental, and labor laws and regulations—has taken over the functioning of our government. Our president has acquiesced. This billionaire is in regular communication a dictator who does not have American interests at heart, and he is making changes to the daily running of government that are contrary to laws passed by Congress as well as to the Constitution on which we have based our government for 237 years.
Coups are not always about tanks and military. Hitler took over Germany in a bureaucratic coup in 1933, and he consolidated it with an election in which he failed to get 50% of the vote despite significant measures to suppress votes of those likely to vote for someone else, after which he used the compliance of members from sympathetic parties and outright bullied members of the other parties represented in the Reichstag—the German equivalent of our Congress—into outlawing all political parties but his own. The sympathetic parties imagined they could keep working with him. Putin did not need tanks and an army; he eliminated freedom of the press and surrounded himself with oligarchs who were happy to work with him because they could enrich themselves with his state corruption, which siphons money out of ordinary people’s pockets for the benefit of the billionaires. Orban used Christian nationalism in overturning democracy in Hungary.
This is where we are. This is certainly the Trump/Musk/Vance/oligarch agenda. They are playing evangelicals and white Christian nationalists to consolidate power. And they are lying to us. If Musk’s & Trump’s concern was really about fraud and waste, they would be sending in teams of forensic accountants, because that is how you identify fraud and waste. In fact, the government has a whole system of watchdogs, called Inspectors General, who look for fraud and waste. They are very good at it. For instance, for fiscal year 2023 the inspectors that oversee Medicare recovered $1.2 billion. They obtained 1143 convictions and excluded 795 individuals and entities from participating in federally funded programs.[1] Trump fired most of them—illegally—before he turned Musk loose. It turns out that a lot of what Musk is going after are the entities within the government that were already investigating his companies. He calls them fraud and waste, because words have power. But lies cannot become truth simply because they are said aloud. Saying them loudly in darkness does not make them true. He is also eliminated Congressionally mandated programs and grants that benefit us all by promoting scientific research, clean water, sound roads and bridges, and things that help poor and retired people survive. These programs also employ tens of thousands of Americans, either directly or indirectly. Musk has also caused the biggest data breach in human history, and has captured the financial data of every American who pays taxes or receives any kind of government funds.
Republican members of Congress are compliant. Democratic members of Congress are not, at least not entirely, but they have not yet found unified and effective leadership to push back. We are at the moment where if we do not push back now, we will lose our democracy. Maybe you voted for Trump, maybe you voted for Harris, maybe you voted for a third party or sat the election out. You all had reasons for your choice, as did I, but I doubt you voted for this coup. We are already far down the road to a loss of our fundamental American, democratic, Constitutional liberties. There are numerous writers who are talking about this. Because our traditional media bowed to the dictator long before he resumed power, many of them are not speaking frankly and openly about what is happening, but many gifted historians, legal scholars, and journalists—some of whom have left formerly reliable media that have caved to Trump—are writing here on Substack. If you don’t believe me, read Timothy Snyder, Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce White Vance, Kristin Du Mez, or Robert P Jones. If you want to know how far we are into the authoritarian consolidation of power and demise of our liberty, take a look at this post by Cristina Pagel.[2]
We must inform ourselves, and we must act. Call our representatives every day. Tell them what you want them to do. Show up at protests if you can. Participate in the national actions planned for February 17 (Not Our President’s Day) or February 28 (buy nothing day), or the national strike being planned for March. Here’s a list of some ideas.[3] You can also look at Indivisible (at https://indivisible.org) or Red, Wine & Blue (at https://redwine.blue).
One way I am pushing back is by writing this blog. Authoritarianism tries to control language. It fears imagination. It obliterates love. In this space, my goal is to spark our imagination and nurture words with creative writing and observations about the world we inhabit. My goal is to publish weekly, though I’m not quite there. And I haven’t forgotten about writing part 3 of the essay I started—events have overtaken my plans, and I’m having to revise what I have to say in that part. Be back here soon.
[1] https://oig.hhs.gov/reports/all/2024/at-a-glance-medicaid-fraud-control-units-fiscal-year-2023-annual-report/
