editorial
Volume 35, Number 3

With Democracy Hanging by a Thread,
We Find Ourselves at an Inflection Point

Fred Schepartz


Democracy is hanging by a thread.

Though that thread may not be quite as frayed as it was just a few days ago.

But let us first be crystal clear, a return to the White House for Giant Baby Man would be a huge threat to our democracy, and if Republicans take both the senate and the house, it could be the end of our democracy.

As is said, when someone tells you who they are, believe them.

GBM did in fact say that he would be a dictator on Day One. Maybe he meant, only on Day One. Maybe. But first, that statement demonstrates that he would be willing to be a dictator. Second, even if it was just for one day, he could cause irreparable damage to our democracy.

Of course he would prefer dictatorial powers. He is an extreme narcissist with an outrageously heightened sense of entitlement and absolutely no sense of accountability. He admires autocrats. He himself has demonstrated on countless occasions strong autocratic tendencies.

I remember early in his administration, it seemed GBM didn’t particularly enjoy the job. That is until he realized just how much power the president has, and not just in terms of potential for using the office as a grift.

It is clear that he would like to imprison and perhaps even execute his enemies. He wanted to order troops to shoot protesters during the George Floyd protests. He had no problem gassing protesters so he could make that symbolic walk to a St. John’s Church where he held the Bible upside down.

There were adults in the room during GBM’s administration. There were guardrails that prevented consequences of his worst impulses. In a second administration, adults would be replaced with Yes Men and sinister people like Steven Bannon and Steven Miller, alt right types who never should have been normalized, who never should have been allowed to crawl out from under the rocks where they spewed their hate.

Under a second GBM administration, there could be a nationwide abortion ban. Certainly, individual states will be free to pass increasingly draconian measures that should curdle the blood of all decent people. Pregnant women could be tracked and prosecuted for having an abortion or even considering one. Period tracking could be used to identify women who might be pregnant in order to restrict their movement and prevent them from leaving the state to possibly have an abortion. And what if fetuses are granted full personhood?

IVF has been restricted in many states. Medication abortion could be outlawed. Birth control, which some Republicans consider to be abortifacient could be outlawed as well.

While the Supreme Court tried to claim that the Dobbs decision only applied overturning Roe, the actual decision contained Trojan Horses clearly designed to go after decisions based on similar reasoning that protects privacy and free speech. Using the reasoning of Dobbs, SCOTUS could come back and reverse its decisions on marriage equality and the right to contraception.

And speaking of the Supreme Court, this is another area where a second GBM administration would be devastating to our democracy. Prior to this year, the Roberts Court had to be considered to be one of the worst Supreme Courts in our history having already open the flood gates to corrosive dark money thanks to Citizens United, while also gutting the Civil Rights Act and severely damaging affirmative action.

Precedent, supposedly a sacred aspect of our judicial system, means nothing to this court. We saw it with Dobbs, and we saw it with the Presidential Immunity case and the overturning of Chevron.

In United States v. Nixon, SCOTUS ruled decisively that presidents don’t have immunity from orders from courts, in this case the turning over of the Watergate Tapes, which made impeachment inevitable and led to Nixon’s resignation.

But now presidents do have immunity. They could literally order a Seal team to execute a political rival. This ironically falls in the face of the Originalism so fetishized by people like Alito. Surely, the Founding Fathers were influenced by the parable of Charles I who stated that he is the king, and if an act is committed by the king, it must be legal. And then they chopped off his head.

Granting presidential immunity not only is a huge threat to our democracy, but the decision itself contained certain Easter Eggs that could be used to overturn GBM’s Manhattan felony conviction. Such a ruling should not be that specific. It is based on general concepts and really should have been tailored around those four corners.

So many experts were shocked at the decision. The notion of full presidential immunity was absurd, if not laughable. Experts clearly stated that the Appeals Court decision was bullet proof, or at least should have been.

But no, the court just did what it wanted to do or rather what GBM wanted them to do.

Chevron wasn’t just precedent, it was widely cited precedent, one of the most often cited cases in Supreme Court history. And it was a sensible decision. In a nutshell, it stated that if the legislature did not provide clear legislative intent when delegating responsibility to an administrative agency, courts had to defer to the expertise of the agency rather than providing its own judicial interpretation.

Again, sensible. The EPA, for instance, has experts who draft and implement administrative rules. Their expertise has great value and should be recognized. In an ironic demonstration, The Chevron decision had to be rewritten because Neil Gorsuch had confused nitrogen oxide with nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas.

SCOTUS is hopelessly corrupt and partisan. And it would only get worse if GBM returns to the White House. Alito and Thomas would probably retire almost immediately (and will receive seven figure golden parachutes for doing such). They would be replaced by younger versions who would be completely beholden to GBM and likely would have little to no competence.

Please keep in mind, it would take merely replacing two conservative justices to flip this lopsided court. Alito is 74 years old, Thomas 76.

If nothing else, maybe we can get some ethics rules that have real teeth.

And then there’s Project 2025.

Unless you’ve been in sensory deprivation for the past month, you’ve heard of it.

It is an utterly sinister blueprint for a second Giant Baby Man administration. The 922-page document is from the Heritage Foundation and is absolutely horrifying. It’s a radical, far right-wing extremist, white Christian Nationalist plan to change this country into something unrecognizable.

GBM claims to have no knowledge of it, but many of his previous campaign advisors have clear fingerprints all over the document. Again, when they tell you how they are, believe them.

Through this document, the Heritage Foundation clearly states what they plan to do in the first 180 days if they are given the opportunity. And it should be noted that they are planning a “bloodless coup,” assuming they don’t get opposition “from the left.” These chilling words clearly threaten violence.

I can’t highlight the entire plan in this space. Much has been written about Project 2025, but I will offer a few highlights:

In their own words: “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration. “

Yes, democracy is hanging by a thread, but as I said, the thread is not quite as frayed as it was merely a few days ago.

Joe Biden, in a selfless, patriotic act, dropped out of the presidential race in a move that while not unheard of was pretty unprecedented in terms of the timing. And I admire him for taking this step. I didn’t necessarily agree with the movement to push him out. I felt that there may have been enough of a wind at his back that he could defeat GBM. Ultimately, however, he felt that the stakes were too high to take that chance, so he stepped aside and endorsed Kamala Harris.

And as we’ve seen over the past few days, this was absolutely the right decision. The excitement for Kamala is off the charts. And her ascension has flipped the script in the race. Now GBM is the candidate who would be the oldest person elected president. He’s the one who is old, cognitively in decline, and a criminal unfit to serve in the White House.

This stands in stark contrast from the nauseating display at the RNC where the nation saw a cult in action, waving the bloody flag for their fearless leader, who had been saved from an assassin’s bullet by the hand of God.

By the end of the RNC, I really thought we were fucked. Everything felt utterly hopeless.

Three days later, the story was Kamala, and the RNC was barely a distant memory.

I watched Biden’s speech from the Oval Office about his decision to drop out of the race and found it quite moving. His dedication to a calling to serve the American public was crystal clear, and his recitation of the accomplishments of his administration was a solid reminder of how consequential his presidency has been.

(And tragic, in terms of actions and inactions with Gaza.)

Watching him, I clearly saw that he is indeed diminished though not so much so that he cannot serve out his term as some Republicans have stated.

Mitch Jeserich, host of Letters and Politics, the fantastic show syndicated through KPFA Radio, presented a touching observation. He said he knew Biden when he was a Capitol Hill reporter decades ago. In those days, Biden was a lion. Jeserich observed that Biden does not possess the dynamic power that he did when he was younger, but nonetheless he has a wisdom that is generally not found among younger people, and it is a wisdom taken for granted by a youth-obsessed culture.

During the fateful debate, GBM tried to claim that experts called Biden the worst president ever. It was sad to see Biden unable, due to illness, to defend himself, especially because history will look at his presidency in a pretty positive light, both in terms of his accomplishments and stepping up to defeat GBM because someone had to do it.

And I would imagine that future historians will take a positive view of his decision to drop out of the presidential race.

I have an additional view of Biden, and I’ve thought this for the past four years. While he has many accomplishments, maybe his greatest accomplishment will be that as a transitional figure.

I am reminded of the Roman Emperor Nerva. Like Biden, he served during a tempestuous period. Rome had survived a brief civil war, which led to Vespasian becoming emperor and eventually dying of natural causes after a largely successful reign. His son, Titus, served as emperor briefly before he died. His brother, Domitian, rumored to have played a role in the death of Titus, was assassinated 15 years later.

Rome almost fell into civil war again. The senate appointed Nerva as emperor. He was old at nearly 66 years old but was an able and accomplished administrator. He died two years later but had one major accomplishment. He adopted Trajan as his heir thus ensuring a peaceful and orderly transfer of power, setting an example that would provide Rome nearly 100 years of peace and relative prosperity.

Biden brought some calm to a tense and tenuous situation. And by selecting Kamala as his running mate and then endorsing her as his replacement on the party ticket, he ensured a peaceful transition that hopefully will result in his party keeping the presidency and perhaps once and for all ending not just GBM but Trumpism. And maybe we will finally see the end of elections where we have to choose between two old white men.

I had an eerie feeling watching Biden’s speech because he was using some of the same words that were in my head as I mentally composed this editorial.

We are at an inflection point.

Democracy is hanging by a thread, but there is something we can do about it. We can choose to not sit on the sidelines but actually get involved. It’s not enough to merely vote. Talk to people. Use social media to spread the word about Project 2025. Donate money to Kamala’s campaign as well as down-ballot candidates. Volunteer. Knock on doors. Work phone banks.

Our democracy is far from perfect. There is a lot wrong that needs to be fixed, that we can fix, but we won’t be able to do any of that if our democracy ceases to exist.

I have stated repeatedly in this space that we have made tremendous strides as a society. I do believe the arc of history bends toward justice, but there is always the backlash, and that’s what we’re seeing. If we want to save our advances, we must survive the backlash.

It’s up to us. This is the time. This is the moment.

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