While ample attention remains on the most frontal of Donald Trump's assaults on our democracy — his role in the Capitol riot that has led to his looming impeachment trial — the Biden administration has started to tackle some of its predecessor's less public upending of governing norms.
The latest moves were revealed without fanfare Wednesday. The Justice Department rescinded two policies instituted in the weeks after the election, designed to give the defeated president extraordinary support as he promulgated his campaign of lies claiming flawed election rules and rampant cheating had robbed him of a rightful second term.
The reversals came as President Biden professed his strongest support yet for conducting the Senate impeachment trial, saying to do otherwise would be "farcical," and a panel of election law experts declared that simple math proved there was "no evidence" to support the Trump crusade.
Monty Wilkinson, a career civil servant who is the acting attorney general until the confirmation of Merrick Garland, rescinded two directives issued by Attorney General William Barr near the end of his tenure.
One, issued a week after Election Day as Trump was escalating his baseless claims of a stolen victory, repealed decades-old policies of restraint for field offices across the country investigating allegations of ballot fraud — allowing them, for example, to bypass such procedural steps as getting permission from Justice Department headquarters before interviewing witnesses.
The point of the longstanding policy was for the government to stay out of the way so states could conduct their vote certification processes.
Barr's move prompted his chief election law prosecutor, Richard Pilger, to resign. Fifteen of his career lawyers then urged Barr to revert to previous the status quo, saying the policy change was "was not based on fact" and "thrusts career prosecutors into partisan politics."
The other directive abandoned Wednesday was the last Barr signed before leaving office in December.
By that point he had infuriated Trump by telling the nation his department had found no evidence of election fraud or other irregularities significant enough to come close to changing the outcome in any state. But Barr told the Civil Rights Division to leave states alone if they decided to reimpose strict rules for absentee or early voting that had been relaxed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"A change in voting laws or procedures by a state or local jurisdiction which readopts prior laws or procedures shall be presumed lawful unless the prior regime was found to be unlawful," he declared.
Because that policy is now abandoned, it could make it more difficult for states to withstand lawsuits alleging the reimposition of voter suppression statutes. Republicans in charge of the General Assembly in newly purple Georgia are moving to do so most prominently, but the Brennan Center for Justice has tabulated 106 bills in 28 states designed to make access to the plls more difficult than in 220 — a huge increase from a year ago.
Meanwhile, a paper circulated Wednesday by three election scholars — Andrew Eggers of the University of Chicago and Haritz Garro and Justin Grimmer of the Democracy and Polarization Lab at Stanford — cited an ocean of calculations to debunk the efforts of Trump and his loyalists to discredit the election with statistics suggesting foul play.
"Reviewing the most prominent of these statistical claims, we conclude that none of them is even remotely convincing," they said. "The common logic behind these claims is that, if the election were fairly conducted, some feature of the observed 2020 election result would be unlikely or impossible. In each case, we find that the purportedly anomalous fact is either not a fact or not anomalous."
Nonetheless, Trump pointed to these and other specious allegations time and again after the election — culminating in his Jan. 6 speech exhorting allies to head to the Capitol to disrupt the counting of the electoral votes. Six people died in the ensuing riot, and a week later the House impeached him for inciting the insurrection.
The Senate trial of that charge is set to start Tuesday, with Trump's lawyers arguing the proceedings are unconstitutional now that Trump has left office. The consequences of conviction, which would require the highly unlikely support of at last 17 Republcian senators, is that Trump would be barred from a presidential comeback.
Canceling the trial would "make a mockery of the system," Biden said in an interview with People published Wednesday. "He was impeached by the House and it has to move forward, otherwise it would come off as farcical what this was all about."
Old engraved illustration of Ulysses defying the Cyclops.
Odysseus Reimagined: Nolan’s Epic Explores What Makes a True Hero
Who is a hero? More importantly: what is a hero? What attributes are universally admired, inspiring glorious stories, ballads and songs, memorials and movies, all chronicling the hero’s bold adventures?
The Odyssey, a new release written and directed by Christopher Nolan, attempts to answer that question. Based on the ancient tales The Iliad and The Odyssey, written by Homer around 800 BC, the film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, his loyal wife.
Historians have puzzled over the “Homeric question,” that is, who was Homer? We know very little about him, not even when or where he was born; seven Greek cities lay claim to him as their native son. Yet, he is considered the “godfather” of national Greek culture, and his stories are among the earliest masterpieces of literature.
Homer is sometimes romanticized as a blind poet who wandered from town to town reciting his stories. But he, who could express so poignantly the tribulations of Odysseus, was not blind to human nature. He keenly wrote of the attributes as well as the paltriness in his characters and the flaws of his great hero, Odysseus.
The Iliad is the story of the final years of the Trojan War, sparked when Helen, the beautiful wife of Sparta’s King Menelaus, was kidnapped by Paris of Troy. Because the kings had initiated a pact to defend one another, Odysseus was drawn into the fray.
After spending ten years fighting the Trojan War and finally achieving victory, The Odyssey tells of Odysseus’s struggle to return to his kingdom, Ithaca. On his way home, he encounters many dangers and delays. He is pursued by the sea-god Poseidon, must surmount Circe’s spell, and overcome the seductive charms of the enchantress Calypso, and his journey takes him another ten years.
Odysseus’s desires and struggles are universal: his longing for home, yearning for an end to his troubles, for rest after a long and difficult journey. His difficulties reflect the immemorial questions of what it means to be loyal, to belong, what it means “to be” at all. Despite his hubris, which manifests in his propensity to court catastrophe without regard for consequences, Odysseus is an authentic hero, noble and admirable, brave and dedicated.
According to the Greek ideal, a true hero must possess physical excellence and moral virtue. He must, as well, embrace his civic duty. Achieving such status requires “paideia,” a good education; “sophrosyne,” moderation in maintaining physical and emotional balance; and “arete,” an allegiance to the state.
Fictional or real, heroes’ deeds resonate through the centuries and shine a light on what is best in humanity, what matters, what will live on despite our mortality.
Is our digital age really so different from Homer’s Bronze Age? Physical beauty is still adulated, as it was then with Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships.” (Marlowe) Power is still king, and wealth is still power.
The years of the Trojan War were harsh and violent. But were they more brutal than the times we live in? Although millenniums have passed and we now have different battlefields, Palestine, Ukraine, Iran, etc., the ravages and the wages of war remain the same: death and suffering. Humanity’s currency is the same, and so, too, is our quest for heroes.
Social scientists claim that after three generations most people are forgotten by even their direct progeny, and after four, remembered only by historical records. So, what then does last? What makes a difference? What is truly beautiful and worthwhile in life?
The universal themes embodied and emboldened by our heroes throughout the ages, the faithfulness of their hearts and the courage of their deeds, these last.
The essential qualities of a hero are manifested in Homer’s Odysseus. Steadfast integrity: “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” His deep compassion: “Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for others’ good, and to melt at others’ woes.” (Both quotes from The Odyssey.)
Nolan’s movie may have created a more virtuous hero than Homer’s works, but the core of the nearly 3,000-year-old-story is intact and as crucially relevant today as it was then. It is the stuff of life: trauma, survival, relationships with others, finding oneself, deciding what is right, choosing a path forward, sometimes, ultimately leading to the honing of a hero.
Just as Odysseus braved storms, temptations, and trials in search of home, we too face a modern sea of civic turbulence, polarization, mistrust, and the fraying of our shared story.
As we live, we too will write our defining stories. How then might we become modern heroes?
By instigating the third Greek ideal of “arete”; embracing our civic duty. By becoming citizens who are open to reflection and debate, who are willing to act with purpose for the betterment of our nation.
In this journey, the work of renewing our democracy can be its own Odyssey, a voyage calling for integrity, courage, and steadfast commitment. Not to return home as Odysseus so desired, but to preserve our home, for the grand and worthwhile purpose of working toward an ever-better future for our country.
With others, we can shape the next chapter of our nation’s collective story.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."