The Danger of Labeling Trump a Threat to Democracy

Let’s play a quick game, no googling! Who said this? “[my opponent] won under the rules of the game at the time, but the game was rigged against the voters of Georgia.” Any guesses? Answer below.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to participate in war games meant to simulate what it would like if an authoritarian President took the controls of power in America. I wrote about that experience here if you’d like to learn more about it. So when the Atlanta Civic Circle invited me to be on a panel at Georgia State University after a screening of a documentary called War Game, I accepted.

The film depicts a fictional set of characters, including radicalized members of the US military, who attempt to stage a military coup in an effort to stop Congress from certifying a Presidential election. This is not a concern I generally share with the filmmakers behind War Game, but attending the screening gave me an opportunity to challenge what I knew would be an audience that slanted to the left in their political leanings.

When the opportunity presented itself I asked the audience by show of hands if they had heard that Trump was a threat to democracy. Nearly every hand in the room went up. Okay. I then asked for them to keep their hands up if they actually believed that Trump was a threat to democracy, and only a few put their hands down.

I then asked those with their hands up how would they feel if in two weeks, when the election is certified, Trump is declared the legitimate winner. Initially you could hear a pin drop. Someone broke the silence by saying they would be sad. Another indicated that they would be scared.

So I shared with them the thing that is really bothering me about this election, and that is how both sides have irresponsibly salted the earth about elections as an institution. How can you have faith in democracy as an institution when in your mind the greatest threat to democracy in American history is elected? It requires a great deal of suffering through cognitive dissonance to resolve how incongruent those concepts are. I challenged the audience to discard that notion because it is inherently dangerous and has a high probability to lead to violence. That sadness and fear they expressed can easily be converted to anger which could motivate actions, some of which, like the attempted assassinations of Trump, have already been attempted.

Not to mention that this criticism of Trump by Democrats when their nominee has yet to win a single state in any type of caucus or primary and was crowned the nominee without allowing the voters to have a say smacks of the most ironic kind of hypocrisy. It must be said, the Democrats have shown no fealty to the institution of democracy at all.

We saw violence from the right on January 6th because people came to believe with great conviction that the election was illegitimate. It has been widely documented how those who stormed the Capitol genuinely believed they were acting as patriots. And with Trump and his surrogates actively telling people the only way they can lose this time is if it is stolen from him, many have concerns that if he loses again the same type of event may repeat itself. At least this time it won’t be Mike Pence who is threatened with the gallows, I guess.

But we are fooling ourselves if we believe that this type of violence can only be perpetrated by the right. Democrats have been telling us for years now that that Trump is an existential threat to America. You don’t think that rhetoric can be used to radicalize people the same way rioters on January 6th were motivated? You think that everyone on the left is impervious to being motivated to vigilantism and violence? Steve Scalise would like a word.

Democrats have also been singing from the stolen election hymnal for quite a while. Here in Georgia Stacey Abrams comes to mind. Which, if you guessed her at the beginning of this article, congratulations, you win! But there are plenty of examples to pull from, not the least of which is Hillary Clinton, who once had Democrats in this country convinced that Russians hacked the election on behalf of Donald Trump. Not just interfered with disinformation campaigns, but actually flipped votes. These attacks on legitimate results are no less damaging than those of the stop the steal crowd.

This election has reached a boiling point, but it isn’t the institutions of democracy and elections that has caused it. That heat has been applied by the leaders in each major party. And I do not see anyone in those parties either willing or able to demonstrate the leadership necessary to cool things off. Nor are they motivated to do so.

But allow me to peel back these dark clouds and offer a silver lining, a ray of hope. Our system of government was actually built to withstand these types of attacks we have seen from both sides. The office of President is not designed to have unlimited and unchecked power.

I know the left is saying that Trump is on a crusade for retribution, but I conjecture that he wants to be loved by historians more than he wants to be known as an authoritarian President. Evidence of the latter can be seen in many of his policy positions which have shifted noticeably to the left during this campaign, not the least of which is his stance on abortion. If you feel that I am stretching here, I again admit I have engaged in conjecture about what he wants to be remembered for, but I will staunchly defend all other claims I make here.

So let’s say for a second Trump tried to fulfill the left’s worst fears and attempts a carbon copy of a Hitleresque regime. It would require countless thousands of people to violate an oath they took to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States to do so. It would require an abandonment by those countless thousands of everything that makes America great to begin with. It would require the complicity of all three branches of government. Our system of government can seem unmanageable and slow because it requires so much buy in by people who approach our challenges from so many diverse view points, but in this case that may be our saving grace. At the end of the day, our institutions are our people, and to lose faith in them is to lose faith in ourselves.

And if you have lost faith in those institutions, then you are the reason why I decided to write this piece. Because like many of your fellow Americans, you have been bombarded by our leaders with messages to get you to the place where you feel that way. And the reason for them doing so is to make it harder for the winner, whoever that may be, to govern. Don’t buy into it. Choose to dig in. Choose to defend them. Choose to build on them and improve them. These are choices you are empowered to make. It is really the only thing that will save us and see us through whatever challenges we face as Americans.