We Are Outgunned. Out manned. Out numbered. Out planned.
We Gotta Make an All Out Stand!”
—GEN. GEORGE WASHINGTON, Hamilton, the Musical
As a boy I used to solve my most taxing and vexatious problems on a bench behind Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Next to the statue of Commodore Barry, I would try to understand why my family cared so much about this nation. Why did my father show me how deeply he loved this country even though as a black man he was disrespected at every turn in his life? Why did his father, my grandfather, volunteer to fight in the Great War and break his back offloading munitions and loading the dead in France? Why did his brother, my granduncle, run horse-drawn caissons filled with explosives to the front and back with dead white boys? Why did their father, my great-grandfather, run away from his plantation in Tennessee and take up arms in a regiment of US Colored Troops? I discovered the answer one day walking from Independence Hall. I had walked past Washington Square a thousand times in my youth but never stopped there until I was in the Navy. I learned that it was originally a cemetery for slaves and that during the Revolution it became a burial ground for perhaps a thousand or more unnamed soldiers who died in the war. Above the mass grave turned park stands a statue of George Washington. In front of him is an eternal flame above the grave of the original unknown soldier. It reads, “Beneath this stone rests a soldier of Washington’s army who died to give you liberty.”
I wonder now how would Washington, the father of our country, the first in war, the first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen, feel about the divided United States today? I offer that he would weep with shame. He would shake in anger and stand up and raise his voice to oppose all threats to this great nation—both foreign and domestic. Like me, he would wonder if again in the life of this country will we toy with surrendering all that was won in blood, treasure, and love of liberty for the rule of the mob and the parseltongue of the billionaire tyrant.
Many of Trump’s most ardent supporters wrap themselves in the flag and Constitution to argue for the destruction of that document’s protections. Others say that the situation in America, crafted from their own ignorance, xenophobia, and an incessant feeding of Russian-backed propaganda, under an incredibly mild-mannered and even-keeled President Barack Obama, has led America to the brink of economic and cultural destruction. This is a horrible fantasy, which no one who espouses it could find a true documentable example. In fact, many feel that the greatest disasters of the early 21st century—the government’s horrific response to Hurricane Katrina, the death toll of the Iraq War, the 2008 economic collapse, and the origin of the terrorist group ISIS—were all the responsibility, if not outright evil scheme, of the first African American President. Needless to say, none of those incidents had their origins or presented themselves during his presidency. The fact that he inherited them and resolved those issues somehow inflamed the lower-class white voter even more. And why not? The Republican Party and Fox News were there at every turn telling them that the black President had destroyed America. No one ever went to the window to check if the nation was actually destroyed. Like the Soviet and Russian propaganda campaigns that steered these fantasies into the internet, the Trump voter believes all the negative propaganda must be true if other people within their information warfare bubble believe them as well. It’s beyond confirmation bias; it is in fact a case of national brainwashing à la the Soviet system.
This amazing turn away from American democracy while maintaining the trappings of the democratic legacy is astounding, not just because of its transparency, but in its bold assertion that what is happening is in fact American patriotism at its finest. So blinded by the Trump-Russian information stream, they think American patriotism is now defined by embracing the beliefs of a rich ex-Communist KGB officer and a con man who defrauded every blue-collar worker who ever laid eyes on him. Actor and activist Ron Perlman put it best when he said that Ronald Reagan’s “Beacon on the Hill” has been replaced with an engine of hate.
That people have passion in their souls to achieve ambitions above the station of regular men and women is right and just. It is to be admired. But Donald Trump’s life has been a case study of deceit in a man’s heart, leading him to the ruin of the American experiment.
One of the most important statements in the entire national security debate was made by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough in an opinion editorial about Donald Trump’s presidency. Scarborough noted: “While the framers of the Constitution foresaw the possibility of a tyrannical president, they never let their imaginations be darkened by the possibility of a compliant Congress.”1
He is correct—the system was not designed to handle this level of corruption from two of the three branches of government. The founding fathers could never have conceived that their legacy, based on considered enlightenment truths, girded by science, and tempered by thoughtful discourse, of the American system of government would lose its way by willingly abdicating its role as three co-equal branches of government. Presidents and Congresses fight all the time. That was to be expected. It was a deliberate friction to incite debate and discovery. To compromise and advance legislation. To use the power of democracy to make the nation always great. Of course the framers assumed nation-states such as the great powers of Europe would attempt machinations, but the very size of the body of representation and the equal branches would put a check on that. The Congress’s ability to investigate chicanery stood the test even during the Civil War. But no one—not Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams, Hamilton, or Washington—ever considered that the majority of the US Congress and its sustaining political party could come under the thrall of a President who gives Benito Mussolini a run for his money. It can be assured that they would have never thought of Americans bowing publicly and openly to a European adversary, whose spies had managed to seed the promise of enough gold that two-thirds of the government would consider the Constitution something of a secondary consideration—and George Washington would know, he ran numerous spy rings!
No matter what happens to Donald Trump, whether his presidency improves or collapses under its own weight, we are confronted by a party that no longer believes in the democracy that was formed by the founding fathers. For all the lip service to originalist American patriotism as it was conceived on July 4, 1776, Donald Trump has embraced policies, actions, and rhetoric that hew closer to those of King George III than George Washington.
So where do we go? What are the solutions? They are simpler than one would imagine. America was built on the lone volunteer citizen-solider, the Minuteman, standing up with whatever tools he had to hold his small part of the line of defense.
We are in an existential fight for our nation’s soul. The opponets of America’s historical tradition of temperate liberty are fellow citizens who accept the words of a nation whose only information source was once, “Pravda,” a news source that figuratively stood for “fake news.” We must stand and defend the accurate news media, the true stories that can be empirically counted. The one thing that all Americans have in equal share is their power to vote this travesty away. If every voter who voted for someone who embraced truth, decency, and dignity of our traditions (as opposed to a blustering xenophobe)—that’s 65 million voters—were to bring just one person who had never voted to any election there would be a massive tidal wave of opposition to the crisis which faces our great nation. Vote + 1 would bring to the polls 130 million voters. These numbers would reflect the real will of the American people. It is a time in American history where one must take a stand. Stand for the founding values of America. The anti-democratic opposition want you to believe they hold the nation’s values only in their hands by way of bumper stickers, the yellow Gadsden “Don’t tread on me” flag, and AR-15 rifle decals with “Come and take it” adornments on their cars. That is not America or its true values. The issue is not about who owns guns but about who loves the real American story—warts and all. This is not a debate of partisanship but one of patriotism, honor, and defense of the American national security infrastructure. If you need a refresher in that inspirational series of events read The Federalist Papers or The Debate on the Constitution, watch the TV series Turn: Washington’s Spies, or renew the love story of our founding fathers by listening to the soundtrack of Hamilton! Watch for the fault lines of the travesty and step into its face with your own voice. Discuss, protest, and make your voice heard. You must. A thought experiment: Imagine the stakes of what will be lost if you, the reader and lover of democracy, do not stand and place yourself between this new global fascism and the legacy of Philadelphia. You owe your children and, by extension, everyone who strived for a chance at democracy to have their voices heard.
Americans, Europeans, and all who cherish the promise of freedom and democracy must hold high their defense of these values. When confronted with a tyrant, like our founding fathers were, we must risk our blood, our treasure, and our very lives to resist and oppose such a corruption of those who have entered the people’s house and made it a den of villainy and inequity.
2016 was a banner year for Russia. In a carefully choreographed cyber warfare attack, the United States, France, Austria, and Montenegro would almost simultaneously fall into Moscow’s sphere of influence. By January 2018, the European Union and NATO would have been on the brink of dissolution; if Trump and Le Pen both had won they would have removed their support. Montenegro would have fallen in a bloody coup and Russia would acquire a naval base in the Adriatic. Right-wing groups all over Europe would rise and force new elections. As Konstantine Rykov proclaimed, “It will be a new world order.”
Only by the good sense of the citizens of France, a nation that saved America in the crib, through the election of Emmanuel Macron and the guardrails of American democracy, stopped the attack in its tracks. But like a bus teetering over the edge of a cliff on the Karakorum highway, it’s the passengers’ decision about what to do next that determines their survival. One more false step to the right and the balance of power in the world that has held the poisonous ideology of Nazism, fascism, and dictatorship at bay since 1945, may end.
One last reminder from General George Washington about who we are and what we stand for:
“Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts—of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”
America and Europe are now joined by a common danger, a philosophy that could easily consume our enlightened histories. It is our duty to stand up to, and counterattack, this mortal threat to our freedom and liberty. All who love freedom and liberty as they were given to us at the birth of the herald of democracy must hold fast and shout out the maxim of the United States Army—“This I’ll Defend”—the salvation of the greatest political democracy in the history of the world is in our hands. We are the cavalry we have been waiting for. Now stop reading. Go forth. Save democracy.