President Donald Trump’s shock and awe campaign and blitzkrieg against American democracy, the rule of law, the country’s governing institutions — and yes, the American people — has been devastatingly effective.
Many of these actions appear to be unconstitutional and illegal. Donald Trump and his agents are already signaling that they will not respect or abide by the decisions of any judges and courts who decide against these actions. On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance made the following threat against the rule of law and the Constitution in a post on X: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power." Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, pushed back, warning on X that:
The battle lines for our democracy have been drawn…. Ultimately, SCOTUS will decide whether the administration’s actions reflect “legitimate executive power.” If the Trump team ignores the courts, any remaining doubt will be gone: they are trying to reverse the revolution that overthrew King George and gave birth to democracy.
To describe the Democrats, the mainstream news media and the so-called Resistance as “ineffective” would be a compliment. They do not appear to know how to act as an effective opposition party and movement in a moment that can reasonably be described as an existential threat to American democracy and freedom. The mainstream media and the feckless Democrats are in their worst moments already acting like collaborators with elected autocrat and aspiring dictator Donald Trump.
In a new essay, Thom Hartmann describes this rapidly escalating national emergency:
Trump is nakedly breaking the law right in front of the entire country, just as progressive Democrats have been predicting. Not a single elected Republican has had the courage to try to stop him or even speak out against his lawlessness, and only a handful of Democrats have found that fearlessness. That has to change….
Ever since Reagan’s Revolution on behalf of the billionaire class, many of us have been shouting from the rooftops about the inevitability of this day. I’ve published multiple books and hundreds of articles, as have many of my colleagues, warning of this exact scenario.
This is the tail-end of the battle, not the beginning…
The greatest danger America is facing today — because Democratic messaging and outrage have been so weak for so long — is that average people won’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late.
America’s democracy has been severely ailing for decades. Donald Trump and his agents and allies, specifically the architects of Project 2025, Agenda 47, the Federalist Society, the White Christian Nationalists and theocrats, the kleptocrats, plutocrats, the techno-feudalists and the larger antidemocracy right-wing have now torn the mask (and hood) off of their revolutionary project to return the country to the Gilded Age if not some time before when rich white “Christian” men had (mostly) uncontested power and control over society.
These forces are now acting in plain sight to advance their decades-long plan of ending multiracial pluralistic democracy and any Constitutional or other legal, institutional and cultural restraints on their project. With Trump and MAGA’s ascendance, the weak resistance to them, and the populist authoritarian base who see these forces as saviors and not destroyers and despoilers, there is no reason to act in secret.
At its core, the Trumpocene is a moral crisis. The American news media, the Democrats, the responsible political class and other mainstream political elites, have been mostly ineffective in countering Trumpism. One of their main failings is a fear of framing America’s democracy crisis and ascendant authoritarianism in moral terms.
Ultimately, a healthy democratic government serves all citizens by protecting and expanding their rights and not just those of the very rich and powerful or other dominant group. Real democracy is multiracial and pluralistic. Donald Trump, the MAGA Republicans and their allies and followers reject those basic values and norms.
In an attempt to gain some clarity on Trump’s return to power, these historic and tumultuous first weeks of his reign and the connections between the country’s democracy crisis and moral crisis, I recently spoke with Rev. Adam Russell Taylor. He is president of Sojourners and author of “A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community.” Taylor previously led the Faith Initiative at the World Bank Group and served as the vice president in charge of Advocacy at World Vision U.S. and the senior political director at Sojourners. He has also served as the executive director of Global Justice, an organization that educates and mobilizes students around global human rights and economic justice. Taylor is ordained in the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention and serves in ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va.
Given everything that has happened, and so quickly, how are you navigating this crisis on the day-to-day? What advice do you have for people who are already feeling burnt out, exhausted and disengaging? Many Americans, as well as people around the world, are terrified.
I’ve felt a sense of moral indignation and a nagging sense that I’m not doing enough in response to the barrage of often cruel and in some cases illegal executive orders and policy proclamations from President Trump. The Trump administration’s flood-the-zone strategy is designed to make us feel overwhelmed, powerless, and even a sense of despair. This is a core tactic of authoritarian governments both past and present. I recommend that people engage in more sustainable ways but not tune out. We must also remember that we have much more agency and power than we may realize. This is also a time for people of faith to tap into the strength and resilience of our faith traditions, which are built for times of struggle and offer deep wells of hope, courage and resilience.
Trump’s shock and awe campaign has been very effective. How have you been enduring?
In some ways what we have seen is worse than I had feared or expected. I knew that President Trump would reverse the Executive Orders from the Biden Administration and would seek to push the limits of his power and authority. However, the unaccountable power of Elon Musk is a new and increasingly dangerous element, as is the degree of carelessness and callousness of many of the policies they have pushed forward, including trying to end birthright citizenship, pardoning practically all of the January 6 insurrectionists (including those who committed violent offenses), seeking to freeze federal grants that directly impact people’s daily lives (before it was blocked by the courts and rescinded) and giving inordinate power to Elon Musk and “DOGE” to run freelance and roughshod across our Federal government to illegally cripple and shut down agencies such as USAID are alarming and represent a real abuse of power. These actions are stretching the limits of executive power and in many cases are unconstitutional.
Why do you think that so many Americans outright ignored or minimized the warnings about the obvious and imminent disaster that Trump’s return to the presidency would cause the country and its democracy? As I have repeatedly warned here at Salon and elsewhere, Donald Trump and his agents have been remarkably direct about what they were going to do upon taking power. Those Americans who voted for this or chose to stay home and not vote are responsible for this disaster.
This is a really hard question to answer and one that I’ve been grappling with a lot since one of my mantras over the past few years is that our democracy is under assault and is increasingly at stake (which I still believe is true). I think we need to better understand how many Americans simply weren’t paying much attention to Trump’s alarming rhetoric and campaign promises and how many were completely disillusioned and distrustful with our politics overall and either stayed home or cast a protest vote against the status quo. Clearly, many voters were inspired by Trump’s rhetoric and promises, though I think that there’s a substantial percentage that is far from diehard MAGA people.
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Where possible, now is a time to engage in deeper relationship building and listening to many disaffected voters, particularly the “working class," to better understand their pain, anger and aspirations. We need to be better and clearer in how we connect the attacks on our democratic norms and system to things that people actually feel and care about. We have to make the case that protecting our democracy is not about protecting a broken status quo. Instead, we must protect it because if we lose our ability to protest, to exercise free speech, to have real checks and balances with a Congress that takes its job as the holder of the purse and serving as an independent branch seriously every issue that we care about will be impacted and jeopardized and we will lose a great deal of agency to be able to change things for the better in the future.
America’s democracy crisis is also a moral crisis of the first order. Why are the mainstream news media and the Democrats and other establishment voices (especially the professional centrists in the news media and punditry) afraid to use clear and direct moral language to describe authoritarianism and the Age of Trump?
Unfortunately, there has often been a secular bias in the media and a real reticence among Democrats to frame issues through a faith lens, often then ceding faith to the other side. The civil rights movement was arguably our most successful pro-democratic movement. Its success stemmed in part from tapping into the moral power and infrastructure of the Black church and casting a bold moral message that appealed to our often shared and best faith-inspired and civic values. It is ludicrous to believe that any party can or should own faith. We also need faith leaders and communities to be bolder in speaking the truth in resisting authoritarianism and to refuse to be coopted or silenced.
The Democrats are floundering. The so-called Resistance is not doing much of anything.
While Democrats have been engaged in some needed soul-searching, I think many are finding their footing and voice right now. I think there was an understandable reluctance among many to avoid responding to every outrageous statement or action by the Trump Administration and many people are still processing feelings of betrayal, despair and lament from the election outcome. That being said, I think we are now at an inflection point when the resistance needs to be much louder, bolder and more strategic, particularly given the overreach of the Trump Administration on issues such as freezing Federal grants, birthright citizenship and empowering an unelected billionaire to cause havoc and meddle with security information at the Treasury Department or seek to shut down USAID, an agency that does such incredible good to build a safer and healthier world.
The Republicans, MAGA and the larger White Right and White Christian Nationalists are experts at using moral appeals and framing their taking power and defeating “the Left” and the Democrats and “political correctness” and “the enemies within” as a war against evil for the heart and soul of the nation. For them, this is literally an existential battle. What would it look like for liberals, progressives, Democrats and other pro-democracy Americans to counter this with their own moral framework and appeals?
I believe that the faith community needs to be careful about mirroring some of the “us versus them” framing and hyper-partisan and fear and grievance-driven tactics of the Religious Right/Christian nationalist movement. At the same time, we also need to be bolder about casting an alternative vision, which in my mind can be tied to recasting the moral vision that animated the civil rights movement, the vision of the Beloved Community. My most succinct definition of the Beloved Community is building a nation in which neither punishment nor privilege is tied to race, gender, religion and sexual orientation and where our growing diversity is embraced as a strength and not something to be feared. It’s creating a nation in which everyone is valued and respected and everyone can thrive. We also need to weaken and counteract the rising appeal of the heretical ideology that is Christian nationalism.
Historically, the civil rights movement, the long Black freedom struggle and other people's movements leveraged moral appeals to great effect. What is a healthy role for religion in a democracy and public life vs an unhealthy one?
I often refer to a quote by Dr. King that “The church at its best is not called to be the master or the servant of the state, but to be the conscience of the state”. We want and need faith leaders and organizations to show up and serve as the conscience of the state right now, including by making a faith-rooted and moral argument around defending our democracy and protecting the most vulnerable, so ultimately, we can transform our democracy into becoming a truly just, inclusive multi-racial one.
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