No, We Haven’t…

Recently, Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz posted on X—where he should have already cancelled his account in favor of Bluesky—“People like efficiency but they are not stupid and they know you don’t just cancel a bunch of cancer research or lay off a bunch of veterans and call that savings.”

There are two very serious flaws with that argument, and that it comes from a leader of the Democratic Party is more than a little disquieting.

The first is Schatz’s endowing the American public with a good deal more awareness than they are entitled to. No, Senator, they may well not know that defunding cancer research or mass layoffs are not savings. Trump’s supporters in CPAC certainly do not. We have just come through an election in which tens of millions of voters displayed profound ignorance, extending to even the most fundamental principles of democratic government. Why would that ignorance not also extend to the most fundamental principles of economics or science?

But the bigger problem is that it implies, as many Democratic office holders and political professionals have as well, that what is happening in the United States is merely a temporary perversion of the democratic process rather than the edge-of-the-cliff threat it is. This is part of the “we have been here before” approach to the Trump presidency, which includes the rather hopeful extrapolation that “we pulled out of it then, we can pull out of it now.”

Whether or not that second statement is true remains to be seen—and it is problematic, at best—but, regardless, the basic premise is wrong.

No. We have not been here before.

There are two popular parallels to the nation’s current predicament and neither of them stands up under scrutiny.

The first, of course, was 1860, when the nation was so torn apart politically that it soon became torn apart geographically. At first blush, issues serious enough to cause a descent into actual civil war would seem more catastrophic than Elon Trump’s ascension, no matter how dysfunctional it may appear.

But there were stark differences between the pre-Civil War years and now.

First, the division was almost entirely over one issue—slavery—and that created a divide that was sectional, not systemic. Although there were certainly many whites in the North who would not have minded if slavery continued, even considered it a better alternative than emancipation, and there were many whites in the South who favored slavery’s end, neither of these groups wielded any real power in state or national government. In the South, anti-slavery sentiment was harshly repressed. In the North, while pro-slavery sentiment was strong and vibrant, it was forced to butt up against the titanic force that was Abraham Lincoln.

In fact, so dominant was Lincoln, so able to bend the political system to his agenda, so willing to consolidate executive authority by such acts as suspending habeas corpus, that he was accused by opponents of ruling as a dictator.

The second parallel is more apt because it was systemic, at least to a degree. In the 1930s, during Franklin Roosevelt’s first two terms, unemployment exceeded 20%, millions were forced from their homes, business closures rendered much of rural America ghost towns, and there was widespread near starvation. As a result, many developed a genuine flirtation with fascism. A number of prominent Americans, including some in Congress and national hero Charles Lindbergh, looked to the success of Germany in pulling itself out of depression and either implied or outright declared that some of that was just what the United States needed. Germany, and to a lesser extent, Japan and Italy, just seemed to be doing so much better than we were.

Lindbergh, in particular, quickly attracted hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to his cause, which later became known, fittingly, as America First. There were widespread calls for him to run for president even though he had no previous political experience. While few of the America First leaders openly advocated that the United States adopt a fascist system—although many rank-and-file Americans did—the impact if their initiatives were adopted might easily have resulted in one all the same.

But just as dissent in the Civil War North was crushed by Lincoln, America First was overwhelmed by Roosevelt, who blunted what was a genuine threat with his New Deal programs and, perhaps to a greater extent, the force of his personality.

In fact, Roosevelt’s detractors, like Lincoln’s, bitterly opposed the expansion of executive power, accusing Roosevelt too of attempting to become a dictator. Even when his court packing initiative flopped—that was just too much for all but his most ardent supporters—in its wake, Supreme Court decisions began to go his way and some of his most bitter enemies on the Court resigned.

In other words, in those two previous crises, it was the good guys who were wielding executive power. Now it most surely is not.

But as dynamic as Lincoln and Roosevelt were, they would likely have failed if they had been faced with the same political climate in which the United States finds itself today. In Lincoln’s case, there was little or no desire to abolish the basic democratic institutions—slaveholders simply wanted a bigger say in the process, the same protections they had achieved when the Constitution was drafted in 1787. Similarly, with Roosevelt, most of his enemies wanted to make the political system more responsive to their wishes. In both, despotic executive power was the enemy, not the goal. Each of them was generally successful in tussles with Congress, but it often took a good bit of horse-trading to get it done. Congress did not simply roll over and whimper as Republicans are doing now.

Perhaps most significantly, in neither case did a large segment of the public, particularly the voting public, either actively want to abolish democracy or were perfectly content to sit by while it withered away.

As it seems to be doing now.