What is the Biggest Threat to Democracy?

Donald Trump was back in the news this week. Well, what week is he not in the news? All the media outlets know that he’s such a polarizing figure he always leads to ratings. CNN hosted a town hall featuring Trump that ignited his base as well as his enemies. The tweets were flying from all directions – from praising his performance to condemning him for breathing and CNN for televising the event.

Trump has a vocal base of supporters who have an irrational devotion to the guy. I know one person who bought property in Belize after Trump lost the 2020 election with plans to ultimately move there. He replaced the flag on his flagpole with a solid black American flag on the day Trump was indicted. He’s convinced the country is lost. Fox covets viewers like him.

His detractors can be equally irrational in their hatred of him. I have another person in my orbit who is certain that the U.S. as we know it will end if he is re-elected. He’ll find a way to make himself a dictator. He and his followers are the biggest threat to democracy the country has ever faced. CNN and MSNBC covet viewers like him.

I sympathize with both groups as there is plenty to like about Trump-era policies and the trends we were seeing pre-COVID, but there is plenty to hate about the guy, his behaviors, his discredited claims and his ambitions.

The question is, are Trump and his followers really America’s biggest threat?

No. Here’s why…

First, I’ll be shocked if he even wins the Republican nomination. And if he does, I don’t think there’s any way he can win a national election. But even if he somehow becomes President again in 2024, there is virtually no way he can eliminate our democratic system and impose a neo-nazi fascist regime. A handful of loyalists in the house and one or two in the senate are not going to be enough to declare him President for life. Followers of Trumpism would have to win an armed rebellion against the most powerful military in the world plus more than half the population. An armed rebellion could potentially happen, but it would be quickly squelched. I don’t see a protracted 2nd U.S. Civil War on the horizon.

However, a much greater threat looms over our nation and fewer people are concerned about it than a possible Trump dictatorship. But this ideological threat has the support of nearly every college and university in the nation. It’s indoctrinating kids in our public schools. The mayors of 17 of the 20 largest cities in the U.S. and 62 of the largest 100 are converts to this ideology. Even President Biden announced his support for the movement in a recent commencement address to graduates at Howard University. “On the best days, enough of us have the guts and the heart to stand up for the best in us,” Biden said. “To stand up against the poison of white supremacy … to single it out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland.” (italics mine)

I would argue that it is not white supremacy, but the mythology that is being developed around the construct that poses the greatest threat to our democracy. I’ll refer to this ideology as Wokeism even though this term is being rejected by the woke. I agree with its critics that it is structured and behaves like a religion, and early on described its own converts as being “woke.”

The presuppositions that underpin this construct have been accepted by so many Americans with no questions asked. According to the Woke Taxonomy published by Shellenberger and Beghossian, they include:

• The American Revolution was a war to protect slavery
• Structural racism is the cause of and only possible explanation for all racial inequality
• Speech and/or silence equals violence
• Rioting and looting are political acts
• Math is racist
• An educational focus on achievement is racist
• Phrases like “reverse racism,” “color-blind society,” and “all lives matter” are racist

The reason Wokeism is such a threat is that believers in the mythology are largely unique to one political party, and that party controls so many of our national institutions. The solutions its proponents put forth are Marxist in nature. Equity is a favorite word of the movement, which implies equal outcomes. In their mind attempts at achieving equal opportunity have been a failure and forcing equal outcomes is the preferred approach.

Since opponents of this movement are defined as white supremacists – their opposition is the evidence – it is much easier for me to see an America operating under a one-party system lead by this group than a one party system lead by Donald Trump or his supporters. As mentioned before, Trump’s only path is rebellion and forced compliance. Wokeists already have their leaders in place in nearly every institution, including the military.

If you do a web search on “Make Republican Party illegal,” you’ll quickly find lots of articles from fringe left pundits supporting making the Republican party illegal. They suggest a similar process that lead to the Communist party becoming illegal in 1954. They claim winning elections is not enough, the Republican party poses such an imminent threat to democracy, it must be outlawed and its leaders locked up. This will save democracy. You’ll still get to vote, but it will be to choose which Democrat gets elected – much like what has happened in America’s larges cities.

I’m not suggesting that rank and file Democrats feel this way. In fact I’m confident they don’t. What I am saying is the path from where we are to a nation where both the good and bad aspects of conservative political thinking are censored, leaving only the good and bad aspects of liberal political thinking as policy options is a much shorter and achievable path than the threat Trumpism poses to a representative democracy where ideas are debated in the public square and the voters ultimately decide what they want from their government.

We already see corporate executives, board members and university faculty losing their positions for saying something that goes against the tenets of Wokeism or failing to bend the knee. Wokeism has the inertia that the Spanish Inquisition and the French Revolution had.

A future with Trump or his cronies having unchallenged political power is terrifying. But unlikely. A future where Trump is hauled off in handcuffs, his supporters are economically or physically isolated, followed over time by CEO’s of companies who don’t score high enough on their ESG ratings, bank presidents and other proponents of capitalism who don’t focus enough on DEI, etc. is a future I fear just as much. And is much more likely.