I recently had a conversation with one of my neighbors who explained that she no longer listened to or read any political news because it was too disturbing. My neighbor is not alone. I have heard from many friends that they avoid all television news shows, as well as the political networks such as Fox News and MSNBC.
This behavior is certainly understandable. Who wants to listen to disjointed double-talk or sheer nonsense and outright lies from so many people in Washington. And then there are also the nearly daily reports of natural disasters or unnatural “heat domes” that oppress us due to a changing climate.
Many American political writers in recent years have deplored the crippling political polarization that has now reached the point where governing is almost impossible. We have allowed the presidency to grow in power in this century so that now, under President Trump, presidential rule supplants the role of Congress.This is anti-Constitutional.
We are now seeing a dictatorship being established, bit by bit, unlawful act by unlawful act, before our very eyes. This itself is enough reason many of us avoid watching television news.
But it wasn’t always this way.
In 1974, when it was clear that President Nixon had broken the law, it was members of his own Republican Party who went to the White House and told him it was time to leave or he would be impeached and convicted.
Throughout my life, until Trump was inaugurated this year, if someone in office was told that their actions were unconstitutional, voters took this warning seriously.
That is no longer the case. Donald Trump was reelected by voters who knew that he had broken laws and committed both crimes and/or sins. They were angry enough at their lot in life that a candidate who was law-abiding, honest, and moral was not nearly as important as inflation and egg prices.
This was illustrated by a cartoon in a June issue of The New Yorker magazine. A lawyer, sitting across from a smiling client on the other side of his desk tells him: “I’m extremely confident about your case now that breaking the law doesn’t carry the stigma that it used to.”
Bad behavior by public officials as well as lawbreaking has now been “normalized,” to quote a word popular with journalists. Remember how shocked we all were by the Columbine High School murders in 1999. Now such events occur almost weekly and we just offer thoughts and prayers. Brutal arrests and mistreatment of citizens by masked ICE officers only brings mild head shakes of disapproval from many.
Because we are inundated by bad news daily, we no longer seem able to care enough to effectively demand — in large numbers — that our leaders find ways to restore some level of moral standards to our public life and culture. We are just tired – very, very tired.
And this is why President Trump and his far right-wing Project 2025 extremists are finding it so easy to destroy our republic and the Constitution that was designed to protect it.
Beyond being tired, most Americans have little real knowledge of the United States Constitution. To them it is an abstraction, something only lawyers study. Democracy is also an abstract concept for many.
Cries to “save democracy” bring either puzzlement or yawns – puzzlement because they can’t really imagine not having the rights they have today, and yawns from those who don’t vote and from those who refuse to believe or just don’t understand the consequences of how what is happening in Washington will affect them.
I feel a great sadness in writing this, but I do still cling to the hope, however faint, that the damage being done to our nation can be reversed.
My MAGA Republican neighbors are fond of using the word “woke” as a shorthand way of condemning those with whom they disagree. Used normally, woke simply means to be awake or aware. Only when we can awaken to the real dangers facing us will we be able to resist them.
May we soon all wake up.
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