I came of age, politically speaking, during the presidency of one of the two most polarizing figures in our recent history. I am aging out during the presidency of the second one.
Richard Nixon and Donald Trump rose to power in markedly different ways but suffered remarkably similar falls from public grace while they were in office. Whatever demons and character flaws may have driven them to wield power as they did obviously played a part in their rise and fall, but they are irrelevant to the central point of this essay.
As presidents, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump made singular and unheralded contributions to the practice of democracy and the way we think of ourselves as Americans, not for their accomplishments while in office but for how a great number of everyday Americans stopped them from pulling off whatever they had in mind to realize their grander ambitions.
Others and I have written about the long and bumpy process whereby societies become more democratic. That is, how more well-to-do, socially prominent, and powerful people cede bits and pieces of what it means to be more and better than the rest of us to more of us than they would have preferred or thought feasible.
The great challenge in effecting such a change is how to pull it off without people retreating, as Tocqueville put it, to the temporary and illusory comfort provided by people in their small private circles, or, even worse, from tearing apart the social and economic order from which more of us today than in the past take a measure of comfort and security.
A complete handover or switch in of who was more on top and who was more in the middle or at the bottom was never finished or even in the cultural cards with which we are playing. There was more dealing from the bottom of the deck and more cards being slipped from sleeves than was agreeable or probably necessary to keep the game going. But over a period of time measured more in centuries than decades, and with more people being able to play, we all learned how to read the table better, call each other’s bluffs, and on occasion, force the dealer to reshuffle the cards to ensure the deck wasn’t as stacked against the rest of us as we had come to believe.
It’s the calling of bluffs and forced reshuffling of the decks that concern me here, how less experienced and accomplished players stopped more deck stacking, surprising sleights of hand, having their pockets picked, and, importantly, how the card sharks had their teeth pulled.
I understand that much of our present concern about the future of our democracy is driven by how Donald Trump behaves, the unwillingness or inability of other elected officials to call him to task for what he says and does, and his continuing appeal to tens of millions of American voters because he says and does these things.
But what sank Richard Nixon’s presidency and is sinking Trump’s is how a great many more Americans who pay middling-to-little attention to politics or how the federal government is supposed to work have called Trump’s bluff.
There is nothing selfless about their intervention. But more than selfishness is in play and at risk when so many Americans stand up and put a loud, disruptive, not infrequently destructive, and increasingly less-than-deadly-face to their unwillingness to be governed as their leaders were insisting.
These are acts of social and political disconsent that rebuke and chastise our governors for their obnoxious behavior and unwanted intrusion into our lives.
Here is how political disconsent works and why it succeeds.
Acts of disconsent do not last a long time. (They don’t have to for their intended message to be delivered or accepted.)
Acts of disconsent are neither designed nor intended to overturn whatever government was responsible for having behaved in an untoward or extreme way. (All the protesting and demonstratively annoying people on the street are happy to return to their otherwise humdrum lives once the offending practices are ended and the people executing them are sent packing.)
Angry disconsenters today are likely to memorialize their displeasure in future elections. (They are less likely than in the past to burn down the house of the offending official or obnoxious neighbor or run them out of town.)
Today’s disconsent has effectively brought Donald Trump’s reign to an end, but probably not his presidency.
He’ll find another ring to add to his circus performance and somebody else to eat in public.
But President Trump is also prone to bellowing loudly and expressing righteous anger and much made-up rage when whoever is on his plate puts up a big stink and bites back.
Minnesotans bit back. Young people and not-so-young people all over the country are biting back.
That’s why President Trump declared a moratorium on bagging and deporting the Spanish-speaking brown people who "sneaked" into the United States.
By my count, this leaves only his cabinet and people in Canada, Greenland, Cuba, Venezuela, NATO, and Ukraine to chew on and spit out.
There’s a midterm election coming.
My money’s on Canada, Greenland, Cuba, Venezuela, NATO, and Ukraine.
